A student volunteer of Stacy Alvares’ pilot project extracting crab DNA from crab shells during a summer lab in July.
Courtesy of Bellevue College
Through a new grant funded by the Lockwood Foundation, Bellevue College faculty will introduce DNA technology to students in its Life Sciences and Molecular Biosciences programs this fall.
“The Lockwood Foundation grant will allow students to get firsthand experience with this technology,” said Stacy Alvares, a Bellevue College adjunct professor in the Life Sciences and Molecular Biosciences programs, in a press release. “Ultimately, I hope students can explore what they’re passionate about.”
This summer, students and faculty are using the nanopore technology to identify the unique DNA of multiple crab species. The project is one of three pilot projects funded by the grant, and it will eventually help faculty introduce the DNA technology to students this fall.
Each pilot project is designed around the use of nanopore technology, a DNA genome sequencing method that researchers use to identify organisms in environmental samples. Nanopore technology is used in laboratories worldwide for various applications, including clinical diagnostics, which involve identifying the type of bacteria causing an infection.
Alvares is one of the faculty members conducting the pilot projects. She is joined by colleagues Jason Fuller and Reza Forough, who both teach biology courses at Bellevue College.
“The grant gives us a way to obtain the reagents and pilot experiments with student volunteers before including them in a course,” Alvares said in the release. “We can also generate data sets that future students can analyze with common online tools.”