WNY Genetics in Research Partnership: Expanding Exposure, Career Exploration and Interactive Projects in Basic Genome Analysis and Bioinformatics

该项目将与纽约14个县的弱势学校建立持续的伙伴关系，这将促进教师和学生的招聘，准备和指导，以促进科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的职业生涯。 项目活动将侧重于基本基因组分析和生物信息学，合作伙伴关系将由布法罗大学生物技术和临床实验室科学系（BCLS）和纽约州地区健康教育中心系统（NYS AHEC）指导。 来自合作学校的30名生物学教师每年将参加布法罗大学为期两周的夏季研讨会，他们将接受美国能源部联合基因组研究所综合微生物基因组注释协作工具包（IMG-ACT）的使用培训。在该项目每个学年的第一学期，NYS AHEC将组织大学和职业探索会议，让学生熟悉基因注释项目，并提供“真实的世界”背景。 学生将在第一学期结束时制定职业规划，并在第二学期期间表明他们对参与基因注释活动的兴趣。在第二学期，每位教师将与至少5名学生（每年150人）一起使用IMG-ACT进行基因组注释项目。每年春天，顶点研讨会将举行，使参与的学生和教师聚集在一起，介绍他们的项目，并与大学教师，研究人员和生物科学雇主互动。 形成性和总结性评估活动将对所有参与多年项目的教师和学生进行评估，以评估与STEM相关职业的知识，行为和倾向变化相关的更广泛的结果。生物信息学正处于快速发展时期，基因组学对生命科学和医疗保健实践越来越重要。遗传学和基因组学研究正在整个生物科学领域扩展，生物信息学正在为增进对健康的理解和改进疾病的预防、检测、诊断和治疗提供工具。增长如此之快，以至于一些地区缺乏训练有素的研究人员，卫生专业人员面临着跟上发展的挑战。此外，这个具有巨大研究潜力的时代与学生对科学兴趣下降的趋势相吻合，国家在解决少数民族在STEM领域的代表性不足方面遇到了特别困难。教师和学生迫切需要接触科学榜样，以及教学方法，使学生能够使用真实的科学数据和工具，并将他们正在学习的内容与他们的家庭和社区面临的问题联系起来。 当学生和教师执行与该项目相关的基因注释时，他们将同时学习使用公共领域的生物信息学软件并进行研究项目。 他们将体验到新发现的兴奋，以及与任何科学实验相关的一些不确定性。 他们将学习质疑假设，并制定和测试他们正在注释的基因的假设，而不是简单地执行脚本实验室练习。预计动手学习和基础生物信息学研究的方法，沿着与STEM相关的职业探索会议和学生参与者的持续NYS AHEC支持，将激励学生，并更好地准备他们在STEM相关领域寻求学术课程和职业。教师将获得基本生物信息学的专业发展和培训，然后可以纳入他们的一般课堂教学。

This project will develop an ongoing partnership with disadvantaged schools across a 14-county region of New York that will facilitate teacher and student recruitment, preparation, and mentorship for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Project activities will focus on basic genome analysis and bioinformatics, and the partnership will be directed by the University at Buffalo Department of Biotechnical and Clinical Laboratory Sciences (BCLS) and the New York State Area Health Education Center System (NYS AHEC). Thirty biology teachers annually from partnering schools will attend a two-week summer workshop at the University at Buffalo where they will receive training in use of the Integrated Microbial Genomes Annotation Collaboration Toolkit (IMG-ACT) of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. During Semester I of each school year of the project, NYS AHEC will organize college and career exploration sessions to familiarize students with the gene annotation project and to provide a "real world" context. Students will develop career plans by the end of Semester I as well as indicate their interest in participating in gene annotation activities during Semester II. During Semester II, each teacher will work with at least 5 students (150 total per year) on a genome annotation project using the IMG-ACT. Each spring, a Capstone Symposium will be held, bringing participating students and teachers together to present their projects and to interact with university faculty, researchers and bioscience employers. Formative and summative evaluation activities will be conducted for all teacher and student participants who participated in multiple years of the project to assess broader based outcomes related to changes in knowledge, behavior and dispositions toward STEM-related careers.Bioinformatics is in a period of rapid growth, and genomics is becoming increasingly important to the life sciences and health care practices. Genetic and genomic research are expanding throughout the biological sciences, and bioinformatics is providing tools for enhanced understanding of health and improvements in prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Growth has been so rapid that some areas are experiencing shortages of trained researchers, and the health professions have been challenged to keep up with developments. Moreover, this era of great research potential coincides with a trend of declining student interest in science, and the nation has had particular difficulty addressing minority underrepresentation in STEM fields. There is an urgent need for teacher and student exposure to science role models, as well as instructional approaches that allow students to work with real scientific data and tools, and to make connections between what they are studying and the problems their families and communities are facing. As students and teachers perform the gene annotations associated with this project they will simultaneously be learning to use public domain bioinformatics software and conducting a research project. They will experience the excitement of making novel discoveries, as well as some of the uncertainty associated with any scientific experiment. They will learn to question assumptions and to formulate and test hypotheses about the genes they are annotating, rather than simply performing scripted laboratory exercises. It is expected that the hands-on approach to learning and basic bioinformatics research, along with the STEM related career exploration sessions and continued NYS AHEC support of student participants, will motivate students, and better prepare them to seek out academic programs and careers in STEM-related areas. Teachers will obtain professional development and training in basic bioinformatics that can then be incorporated into their general classroom teaching.