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FARMINGTON – Virus identification. DNA sequencing. Genetic splicing. Cloning. All before lunch.
“This group has been particularly good,” teacher David Nordstrom said, looking over his biotechnology students. Three are from Mt. Abram High School, two from Mt. Blue and one from Livermore Falls. “I don’t know why that is….”
“Good lab juju?” student Josie Thomas, from Livermore Falls, suggested.
“That’s it,” Nordstrom agreed, cradling a laptop. “They have good lab juju.”
To his left is a microwave, stacked on top of incubators which resemble heavy-duty mini fridges. On the microwave, someone has written a warning in black magic marker: “Lab use only! No food!” Several feet in front of the teacher is a relatively new acquisition; a biological safety cabinet. The piece of equipment weighs roughly 1,000 pounds and creates a sterile environment for the students’ lab work. It resembles nothing so much as a food counter, like one might find in cafeteria or buffet, on steroids.
“In the past we’ve had difficulty getting repeated results, due to contamination,” Nordstrom said. “This year, we’ve found two viruses.”
The cabinet costs thousands of dollars, and would typically be beyond a small program like Nordstrom’s. However, the only other high school biotechnology program in the state, recently closed its doors after its teacher retired. The teacher, Lucy Levesque, had been a mentor to Nordstrom and arranged for the cabinet, and a variety of other pieces of equipment, to be donated to the Foster Tech Center. Most equipment in the classroom bears a sticker, “Thanks to Lucy Levesque.”
It is a testament to the biotech program, now the only one of its kind in Maine, that Nordstrom’s students are working at a level where a sterile workspace even matters. The students’ virus project, which is a collaboration with the University of Southern Maine, has them taking samples from Rollo Pond in Farmington and developing colonies of bacteria. Bacteriophage viruses are extracted from those samples for study.
Students then grow their viruses, using instruments associated with genetic engineering to isolate viral DNA and sequence it. Meanwhile, the DNA pieces are inserted into a plasmid, which is, in turn, inserted into another bacteria, effectively the process of cloning. Sections of the DNA, checked at every stage, are then reassembled to give the students a full DNA sequence of the virus. Nordstrom, and the students, are hoping for new strains.
“We’d be in a record book,” he said with a smile. “Somewhere.”
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Without a sterile environment, however, every stage of the project can be compromised. Nordstrom invited Dennis Eagleson, president The Baker Company of Sanford, which developed the biological safety cabinet, to speak with students today. Nordstrom first met Eagleson at an educational conference at the Eagleson Institute, and he offered to arrange transportation for Augusta school’s cabinet, originally donated by his company, to Mt. Blue High School.
“I told him I’d like to come up and see what he’s doing, trying to be supportive,” Eagleson said. “And he kept inviting me.”
Courses like Nordstrom’s, Eagleson said, offered a number of future careers to students. It falls within the STEM educational focus (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) which is now being pushed nationally and across the state.
“It’s tremendously important,” Eagleson said. “This gets them involved at an earlier age, which is important for us to remain competitive.”
The students all expressed interest in science and careers in science, from marine biologist to forensic scientist to nursing school. Nordstrom is hoping to have a larger class next year, in what will be the fourth year of the program, and believes the program will only get better as more and more of the Levesque-stickered equipment is brought into play.
Foster Tech Center Director Glenn Kapiloff said that Nordstrom had been pushing the idea of a biotech program for years. Recently, cutbacks in the Mt. Blue High School science department have enabled the program’s creation, as Nordstrom works part-time with his biotech students and part-time with his chemistry and anatomy/physiology students.
“It’s quite a process to start a program like this,” Kapiloff said, noting that getting approval from the Department of Education was more difficult when the program wasn’t taught anywhere else in the state. He credited Nordstrom for pushing the program forward.
Nordstrom said that some of his ex-students had already enjoyed success once out of school; one student had begun active research while a freshman at University of Maine, Orono and another is studying forensics.
