Genetics Students and Parents Get Cheeky Gathering DNA

Some students from and their parents will soon get to see how they stack up. That is, how they stack up compared to a whale, a member of a royal family or even another student.

Waubonsie students studying genetics were given the chance to do a DNA extraction on Tuesday night, and they took their parents through the process — with some guidance from the class's teachers.

"Last year I had a princess," said Elaine Modine, genetics and biotech teacher at the school. That particular student, who was of Russian descent, had DNA that was very similar to that of the Romanov family, the last imperial family to rule in Russia.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from a mother to her children, and the female family members continue to pass down the DNA generation to generation. It is used to identify individuals when there has been a catastrophe, as was the case with remains from Sept. 11, Modine said. The information also has been used to determine migration patterns of people.

In this instance, the Waubonsie participants will be able to compare their DNA to a database of human and non-human DNA. None of their vital information will be in danger of being released to anyone, since they are given a number when processing the samples.

"It's a way for students to use their DNA in a meaningful way," Modine said. Rather than reading about DNA in a book, the students get to experience how geneticists gather information.

Students and their parents using a pipette gathered cheek cells and then amplified the DNA through a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The process uses a thermal cycler that heats and cools the DNA repeatedly for 30 cycles, creating millions of copies of the DNA. Once amplified, the DNA is sent to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York.

Saksham Malhotra, 15 and a sophomore from Naperville, said he would like to pursue medicine or genetics in the future. The opportunity to experiment — particularly on himself — was interesting, he said.

Both of Malhotra's parents, Mukta and Harshesh, were in attendance.

"It sounded interesting and something different," Mukta Malhotra said. "You see it on TV all the time, and I wanted to learn more about it."

TV crime dramas such as CSI regularly use DNA to solve crimes, so it was interesting to be able to learn about it in real life, she said.

The students had done the extraction in classes before, and Saksham said he had compared his DNA with other students', but he didn't find any students with similar DNA.

Modine explained that sometimes people may look different, but their mitochondrial DNA may be a closer match than expected, because that information can be traced back thousands and thousands of years.

Modine and Chris Schramm, also a genetics and biotech teacher, helped explain the process to the students and parents. Modine has taught the course for 19 years and will retire in June. Schramm has been teaching the course for five years, and has been at the school seven years.

Kendall Stoller, 17 and a junior from Aurora, said science is a hobby for her. "It's something I've always been interested in," she said.

Stoller especially likes that the class has the students doing a lot of really current projects.

Stoller's parents, Mary Lynne and Bruce, were on hand to get swabbed. Despite needing to wear safety glasses, the process went off without a hitch.

"We are interested in supporting what she gets to do in school," Mary Lynne Stoller said. "It is exciting to see what she does on a daily basis."

The Indian Prairie Education Foundation helps fund programs such as the one held Tuesday night, Modine said. The equipment used in the process can be quite expensive — the thermal cyclers can cost about $8,000 — and grant funding is often used to pay for the equipment.

"It's phenomenal to be able to do something like this," Mary Lynne Stoller said. "We did not have things like this or equipment like this when I was in school. … As a parent you don't always realize what opportunities they have."