Science Insights Day 2024 – Cloning and Imaging a GFP reporter

By Dr Nick Younger, Research Fellow, and Ewa Ozga, PhD Student, members of Dr Hannah Long’s Research Group, MRC Human Genetic Unit

The Science Insights is a college-wide, week-long work experience programme for 40 S5 pupils. The second day is hosted by the IGC and for 2 hours in the afternoon the students join a research group for a Research Taster Session. Scientists across the institute from the labs and the research facilities organise activities to do together and chat about science. Getting to know everyday life in science is exciting, but it is even more fun to try it yourself!

This year, I had the opportunity to organise the session in Dr Hannah Long’s research group with Dr Nick Younger – a Postdoctoral Research fellow in the lab. We welcomed two very motivated (and skilled) future scientists!

Hannah, Ewa and Nick (L-R) with students from the Science Insights programme

We were very excited to share our everyday work that involves manipulating DNA (molecular cloning), introducing these constructs into cells, and imaging the cells that have fluorescence. It is amazing to have the opportunity to work at the cutting-edge labs at the IGC, but it is ever so much more exciting to show it to others!

In this year’s session, the students had an opportunity to prepare a hands-on experiment and experience what it is like to work in a genetics lab.

We started by reviewing worksheets and figures we prepared to make the start easy and engaging – Nick explained the techniques and why we do these experiments.

In the first part of the session, we prepared a gel to perform electrophoresis, loaded samples and analysed whether the experiment worked by checking the length of the DNA fragments. Even though the students were doing this for the very first time, pipetting the DNA into very narrow wells, they nailed it! We got really beautiful results!

In the meantime, while the gel was running, we visited the tissue culture suite where we looked at cells that have GFP (reporters). The students had an opportunity to use a microscope to find the cells and collaborate to analyse together how many cells are dividing and find cells at different stages of mitosis – all thanks to GFP labelling the nuclei of these cells!

Overall, this was an excellent experience providing a unique platform to share curiosity and enthusiasm for the scientific world. We are excited to see today’s participants in the next generation of scientists at the IGC leading their own ground-breaking research! Good luck with your applications to biotechnology and medical sciences!