Parents

Parent Night went especially well due in large part to the information I gave them regarding lab experiences available to a select number of high school students. Dr. Petra
Fromme made it quite obvious that she would be very willing to take on specific high school students and allow them to work in her lab. I mentioned the gravity of the work I was doing in light of the potential energy sources available through this research. Parents were quite intrigued and interested themselves in this work and potential economic ramifications it would also have. I received many positive comments from parents which is like liquid gold to a teacher.

School

At long last...I am into my thrid week of school and have just touched upon the topic of macromolecules and will soon be venturing into cell respiration and photosynthesis. Unfortunately, my focus has been a bit inundated due to abnormally large class sizes of 40 students. I would never even think of doing experimental science due to the space alone! I anticipate that my school will rectify that soon or increase my pay. I have shown the students GFP which they were interested in the novelty of and in its real-world applications. My chemistry class will have fun with the actual crystallization as I have a larger space for that and a slightly smaller class of 33- Sad to say, that 33 is what I deem small. However, teachers are ever the reconfigurers and I am in the process of performing activities that will address my work with ASU.

One exciting surprise is how well my background is supplementing my classes that I am teaching at ASU. The extra exposure to chemistry and molarity makes it easier for me to explain to my students and a lot more exciting!

I plan on doing the reading in the spare 15 minutes I have every day to finally be done just before the due date. Tonight is open house and if I have extra time- I am certainly thinking of sharing my stories with the parents!

7/20/07

7/19/07

Today, we did chromatography with various plants today- native AZ plants, yellow plants, purple plants in order to ascertain their pigments, absorption, and cholrophyll. Interestingly, we found out that raddichio was treated rather harshly and thus, has its white- bleached like color has no more chlorophyll. It was at this point that I started making connections with my previous studies on folivory and howler monkeys behavioral adaptations to a diet rich in mature leaves. It was a conversation that sparked and renewed my previous interest in my undergraduate honor's thesis that had me perform a comparative study on three primate folivores. We also found out that we could each take back 2 vials of GFP each!

7/18/07

Today, we earned the PSI crystals in the cold room yet again and found out that we had one vial of crystals from the seeding crystals that was large enough for x-ray diffraction. Dr. Fromme was quite impressed. We were also informed that our phyocyanin crystals were being measured and analyzed at Berkeley due to their clarity. Additionally, we placed our isolating GFP through a nickel column and allowed it to drip out as the truly isolated GFP. This took several hours even beyond our time there but in the end, we will be bringing back the GFP that will glow with a black light- a sure way of grabbing students attention! In Wachter's more bio-type lab, there is a lot of waiting which allowed us to go back and forth.

7/17/07

Again, worked on GFP and worked with copper sulfate and potassium chloride crystals. Also, took pictures and focused upon our powerpoint presentation as we are all anxious to make this very professional. We will be taking GFP home- relatively stable and will keep in fridge. Am very pleased with the group I am in- both the teachers and the researchers. GFP is not classroom transferrable but is applicable to future lectures in class as it applies protease inhibitors and various bio jargon I have used but never seen in use.

Two labs were going on in parallel this morning. Di worked with Jennifer and myself in creating GFP. Di had put modified e-coli bacteria in a test tube to be multiplied. Then we added it to a flask with a liter of broth. Every hour we checked the bacteria growth by seeing the 600nm absorbtion of a sample. The bacteia had been modified with a plasmid which contained DNA for GFP and an antibiotic resistance protein. The antibiotic resistance was used because an antibiotic was added to the broth to kill any bacteria that was not resistant. After 3 hours there was enough bacteria. GTDP was added, and the temperature reduced. This stopped the bacteria multipling and instead in started to produce GFP.

Meanwhile prof Fromme was running a inorganic crystal lab using copper sulphate.