GeniQuest
Introducing More High School Students to Computational Biology
The Center developed Independent Studies in Computational Biology (ISCB): a two semester program with the first semester focused on surveying the field of computational biology and the second semester dedicated to conducting research.
Reaching a Wider Audience
The program involves students from residential magnet schools and students that started with a strong focus in science and mathematics. The next challenge is to teach the core principles of this course to a wider audience of students and to attempt to reduce the instruction to a class module that can be completed in around 3 weeks.
GeniQuest is a team effort combining the talents of The Jackson Laboratory, the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance, and the Concord Consortium to develop classroom modules to teach computational biology. The project aims to introduce students to genetics, quantitative trait loci analysis, and the relationship between phenotypes and genotypes.
Dragons and Drakes
The project will use a simplified model of Dragons and Drakes (small dragons) to allow the students to breed animals inside a virtual computer-generated world to answer genetic questions. Students will learn to use software to perform quantitative trait loci analysis and to use genome browsers to explore target genomic regions for potential genes of interest. Ultimately, the students will be guided though a search for the genetic cause of a disease in the model organism.
