STAN-X at HARVARD SUMMER SCHOOL

June-August, 2023

For the second summer, members of the Stan-X team ran BIOS-S15 at Harvard. This year we had a dozen students including two post-baccalaureates, who completed a course designed around CRISPR-based genome editing in fruit flies. The course was led by four instructors, Nicole Lantz, Arjun Rajan, Lutz Kockel, Seung Kim, and two teaching assistants, Ms. Maddie Laws and Ms. Clara Gulick. Arjun, Maddie and Clara are alumni of their high school's Stan-X course, so this was a deep dive for them to explore science teaching! The lab was held daily in the famed Biolabs at Harvard, whose notable features include the famous doors adorned with animals from multiple families.

This year, students built new fly lines using CRISPR "Hacky" protocols built by our Stan-X team member Dr. Sangbin Park. These approaches permitted students to use CRISPR/Cas9 strategies in vivo to replace genes with alternative 'LexA' coding regions. Then, as in prior years, students intercrossed their new fly strains to assess region and temporal gene regulation using reporter transgenes. This involved tissue dissection and fluorescence microscopy.

At the conclusion of BIOS-S15, students prepared written summaries and oral presentations about their flies and phenotypes. This rigorous exploration of biology through 'unscripted' experiments with a 'team' of student scientists produced 11 new fly strains that are now the focus of a manuscript in preparation. Congratulations to all the students on a successful course, and experiencing how science experiments are planned, executed, interpreted, and communicated!