The Week Without Walls program (WOW) at
the University Prep high school in Seattle provides learning experiences beyond
a traditional course of study. In a team-based, collaborative, and grade-free
environment, teachers and students pursue educational objectives outside the
classroom. Through WOW, two students, Jan Jongkol and Rebecca Zabinski, and
the Science department chair at University Prep, Dr. Jessica Hanson, have joined
the MO team in 2004 for a few days of learning about being an environmental
scientist. We all had fun sampling Lake Washington, analyzing the sediment community
under the microscope, isolating DNA and performing PCR-based analyses. One of
the students, Rebecca, has decided to continue the studies she performed as
part of the WOW program, joining the MO group as a summer researcher, during
summers of 2004 and 2005. She has carried out a number of important experiments.
One of her projects has been optimization of extraction of microbial cells from
environmental samples essential for FISH analysis. She has also carried out
dilution-to-extinction enrichment experiments in order to isolate as many methylotrophic
bacteria from Lake Washington as possible. These were performed in a 96-well
format, in the presence of one of the following substrates: methane, methanol,
methylamine, formaldehyde, and formate. As a result, she has isolated and characterized
over 40 strains of methylotrophic bacteria. Rebecca has co-authored two articles
describing these results. As of fall 2005, Rebecca is a freshman student at
the Scripps College in California.