KUA Students at the AAAS/AJAS Annual Conference in Chicago
Last week Alexis Chapman ’15, Eleanor Pschirrer-West ’16, Grace Griggs ’17, Stephanie Pipas ’17, and Ariel Silver ’17 represented Kimball Union Academy at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago.
The AAAS is the largest scientific organization in the world and the publisher of Science magazine. It is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science, which was founded in 1848 and marked the emergence of a national scientific community in the United States. Today it has thousands of members worldwide. As members of the American Junior Academy of Science (AJAS), the only honor society for high school scientists, our KUA students participated in a parallel program of events along with about 150 other students from across the country. As part of the program Ali, Eleanor, Grace, Stephanie, and Ariel had two opportunities to present their research – a formal poster presentation and an less formal guided round table discussion of their work with six of their peers from other schools.
It is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science, which was founded in 1848 and marked the emergence of a national scientific community in the United States. Today it has thousands of members worldwide. As members of the American Junior Academy of Science (AJAS), the only honor society for high school scientists, our KUA students participated in a parallel program of events along with about 150 other students from across the country. As part of the program Ali, Eleanor, Grace, Stephanie, and Ariel had two opportunities to present their research – a formal poster presentation and an less formal guided round table discussion of their work with six of their peers from other schools.
They also had breakfast with leading research scientists in a variety of fields and were able to tour various science-related organizations such as the Innovation Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Brookfield Zoo, and two national laboratories – Fermilab and Argonne. Another highlight was listening to two plenary lectures of the AAAS Conference, including one by Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1997), Steven Chu, Professor of Physics & Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University (formerly the US Secretary of Energy, 2009-2013) and another by Alan Alda, Visiting Professor of Journalism?at Stony Brook University (formerly Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H).
It is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science, which was founded in 1848 and marked the emergence of a national scientific community in the United States. Today it has thousands of members worldwide. As members of the American Junior Academy of Science (AJAS), the only honor society for high school scientists, our KUA students participated in a parallel program of events along with about 150 other students from across the country. As part of the program Ali, Eleanor, Grace, Stephanie, and Ariel had two opportunities to present their research – a formal poster presentation and an less formal guided round table discussion of their work with six of their peers from other schools.
They also had breakfast with leading research scientists in a variety of fields and were able to tour various science-related organizations such as the Innovation Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Brookfield Zoo, and two national laboratories – Fermilab and Argonne. Another highlight was listening to two plenary lectures of the AAAS Conference, including one by Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1997), Steven Chu, Professor of Physics & Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University (formerly the US Secretary of Energy, 2009-2013) and another by Alan Alda, Visiting Professor of Journalism?at Stony Brook University (formerly Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H).
The research that Ali, Eleanor, Grace, Stephanie, and Ariel presented represents their work in KUA’s new tissue culture lab that at this point is devoted to propagating two of New England’s endangered orchid species, ultimately with the goal of repopulating these species to their indigenous habitat in and around our local community. In the wild, these species take between 6-8 years to develop from seed to flower. An effective tissue culture propagation procedure can cut that maturation time in half, and it can produce thousands of seedlings at a time.
The first thing they had to do was to insure the function and sterility of the new equipment that is essential for them to do their work in the lab. Then they began researching about and experimenting with ways to get the seeds to germinate in a medium that they prepared. First they wanted to see if Cypripedium reginae, the Showy Lady’s Slipper, would grow in the new lab with similar success to other labs. We were successful and have upwards of 2,300 seedlings already in culture.
Simultaneously to growing these seedlings, Ali and Eleanor looked at the effects of ambient light on the germination of the seeds, which have traditionally been thought to germinate best in the dark, but this has never been tested. They found that Cyp. reginae seeds germinate faster in the dark for the first four weeks, and then germination rates for the next six weeks were similar. Ali and Eleanor will track these seeds through the rest of the propagation procedure and see if they respond differently to any part of the procedure due to the presence of light during germination. The seedlings developing in light are showing expression of chlorophyll, as some of their plastids have specialized to chloroplasts, but those seedlings growing in the dark don’t show this expression of chlorophyll. Perhaps this differentiation of plastids within the seedlings will affect the plants development in other stages of their development.
Ariel, Stephanie, and Grace are trying to find a medium for germinating the Cypripedium parviflorum, the Yellow Lady’s Slipper, which has a very low germination rate (< 0.1%) as compared to the Cyp. reginae (40 – 60%). There are a myriad of medium combinations that can be experimented with to determine the best environment for in vitro germination of these seeds.
There is talk of our students engaging this spring and summer in efforts to micro-propagate the Cyp. reginae, which is taking meristematic (non-specific cells – like human stem cells) tissue/cells from these plants and attempting to grow new plants from them using two different methods of micro-propagation. This is a two to three year project that would be a first in the world – no one has ever cloned an orchid. This project, regardless of its outcome, will be noteworthy worldwide. These students plan to compete in the national Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair to compete for their prestigious scholarship prizes.
To find out more about these students’ work, take a look at the posters hanging outside the lab in 210 Fitch and Mr. Van Dolah’s classroom (214 Fitch). If you are interested in joining the program, speak to Mr. Van Dolah, who is the advisor to KUA’s Endangered Species Program.
