STAN-X PARTNERS’ JOURNAL PUBLICATION: NEW DROSOPHILA TRANSGENIC LINES
Ashley Tay and Sangbin Park poring over new data in the laboratory.
Students and teachers in the Stan-X program published their study “Transgenic Drosophila lines for LexA-dependent gene and growth regulation,” in G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, an official journal of the Genetics Society of America (GSA). This is the third original research article published by members of the Stan-X network since 2016. The article can be accessed here.
Co-authors on this study include Lawrenceville students Elaine Wang, Ashley Tay and Jax Floyd from Hutchins Scholars program, Phillips Exeter Academy students Catherine Griffin and Ella Kim, and Stan-X partnering teachers from these schools and the University of Oxford. Other participants in this study include Stanford student and lead author Kathleen R. Chang, Stanford doctoral student Emily Greenwald, visiting scholar Celine Bennett, and senior author Sangbin Park, a research associate in Developmental Biology at Stanford, and co-founder of Stan-X curricula with Drs. L. Kockel and S. Kim.
Publication co-authors from Lawrenceville and Stanford during a break from their summertime research in 2019.
This study describes several advances for the field of Drosophila genetics, including creation of a genetic tool to convert existing ‘Gal4’ fly lines into ‘LexA.G4H’ lines using modern CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing. In addition, Park and his Stan-X collaborators generated a universal cloning method to generate ‘LexAop-based’ shRNA transgenic lines from functionally validated ‘UAS-based’ shRNA transgenic lines. They then performed a functional screen of new shRNA lines targeting protein phosphatase genes, and identified new growth regulators in the developing wing. Remarkably, the current study was initially developed as a summertime Stanford Bio-X project in 2018 by Chang and Park. This eventually led to development of a syllabus and teaching materials that later generated new discovery-oriented experimental science courses at Lawrenceville, Exeter and Oxford. In 2022, a new course based on this Stan-X study, open to secondary school and college students, will also be offered at the Harvard Summer School.
As part of their course (prior to 2020), Lawrenceville students in the Hutchins Scholars program, led by Dr. Elizabeth Fox, had the opportunity to work and live at Stanford. Likewise, Stanford teaching assistants lived and mentored students at Lawrenceville and Oxford. Over the past four years, collaborations between investigators in these research universities and the students and teachers in Stan-X partner secondary schools successfully generated these new valuable Drosophila resources and phenotypic data for the scientific community, while providing students with a sense of scientific discovery and ownership.
Lawrenceville instructor Nicole Lantz, who accompanied Lawrenceville Hutchins Scholars during their on-site visit to conduct experiments at Stanford in 2019 said, “This was such an incredible experience for our students at Lawrenceville. It is hard to place a value on the experience our students had in actively participating in, and contributing to, the larger scientific community.”
Lead author Kathleen Chang who was a Stanford undergraduate when she worked on this study, said, “I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to learn from and be a part of this scientific team. Working here has made such an impact on me.”
The methods and genetic tools developed in this study have already garnered great interest from the science community, including investigators who study intercellular communication in physiology, development, and neurobiology. The syllabus used by students at our Stan-X partner schools to construct LexAop lines and to perform enhancer trap screens, the basis of the study by Chang et al, 2022, are listed on the Stan-X publications page. For more information about Stan-X programs, please contact Dr. Lutz Kockel, lkockel@stanford.edu, Sangbin Park, sangbin@stanford.edu, or Seung Kim, seungkim@stanford.edu