Sandringham School’s Amgen Biotech experience

Amgen participants, Sandringham School held their first Biotech Week in spring 2017. The following report is from the school's newsletter, The Sandprint:

This is the second year we have loaned biotechnology kit and consumables from the Amgen Experience, however it is the first time that the whole school have had the opportunity to take part! We ran three labs and screened a documentary on the biotech revolution.

The whole week kicked off with assemblies looking at the pioneering work of Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, who developed the technique of DNA fingerprinting which is used in crime scene analysis, parental analysis, conservation of biodiversity and breeding programmes. The following week, students were given the opportunity to try some of these techniques.

The students were dedicated, coming to successive lunches and after school labs to complete these complex practicals. They mastered the use of micropipettes, loaded their own gels and analysed their data using a UV trans-illuminator!

The first lab for KS4 and 5 was extracting cheek cells swabs to investigate the variant of a gene each student had. Students had to take their own sample, and extract their DNA. They then used Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify a non-coding section of their DNA, and ran out their samples on a gel and analysed their data using a UV trans-illuminator.

The first lab for KS4 and 5 was extracting cheek cells swabs to investigate the variant of a gene each student had. Students had to take their own sample, and extract their DNA. They then used Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify a non-coding section of their DNA, and ran out their samples on a gel electrophoresis to see which variant their DNA was.

Finally, KS3 students had the opportunity to look at chimp DNA and work out who was the daddy of the baby chimp. Students pipetted samples into a gel, before analysing a gel that had been previously run to work out which chimp was the father.

The students mastered challenging skills which will prepare them well for A-level Biology and a career in science. Congratulations to all the students who took part – you were fantastic, and proved yourselves to be excellent practical Biologists.