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Education and Public Outreach: Marine Biological Laboratory
Reporting Period: 2007 (7/06-6/07)
micro*scope
The micro*scope (http://microscope.mbl.edu) environment was developed to improve information about microbes for both educational and research objectives. It provides support to the microbiological dimensions of Astrobiology initiatives. This project has been very successful because we have worked with our partner project, uBio (http://www.ubio.org) to incorporate an array of innovative biodiversity informatics tools, collective referred to as "Taxonomic Intelligence". The result is a rich and original data environment that allows for communal input. This project works in alliance with the NSDL funded "Microbial Life Educational Resources" (http://microbial.life.mbl.edu), and the International Census of Marine Microbes (http://icomm.mbl.edu), providing a near foundation layer of factual information for curriculum-compliant educational exercises. The software has also been designed as a template, and has now been picked up as the foundation software for the EU funded plankton*net project (http://www.awi.de/PlanktonNet/). This environment will also be developed as the EPO component of the NAI project "Requirements for the development and maintenance of multicellular life" based at MIT, and it has also been accepted as the starting point for the very large "Encyclopedia of Life" project (http://www.eol.org). Micro*scope currently provides descriptions and pictures of all categories of microorganisms and contains approximately 12000 freely downloadable high-resolution images organized in numerous collections, along with descriptions of 5000 protists. Habitats that have been surveyed include marine, saltwater marshes, fresh water ponds, and other environments including Yellowstone National Park, Rio Tinto (Spain), Ross Sea (Antarctica), Alkaline habitats, and Toolik Lake in Arctic Alaska. Laboratory culture collections (e.g. American Type Culture Collection; the Culture Center for Marine Phytoplankton) have also been surveyed.
Our next objectives is to increase the interoperability with molecular environments, and to develop network services that will make taxon-specific ties between taxa in molecular analyses and complementary content within micro*scope.
Planetary Protection: Policies and Practices Course
Planetary Protection: Policies and Practices is a three day course designed to familiarize practitioners with NASA and COSPAR Planetary Protection policies, and with the practices and procedures necessary to implement Planetary Protection procedures during the conceptualization, design, fabrication, assembly, launch, operation and recovery of solar system exploration missions. The course combines presentations with a laboratory component emphasizing general microbiology and current planetary protection protocols. Michele Bahr presented an introductory lecture on microbiology and organized a laboratory portion for the course. Participants isolated bacteria from a variety of environments, viewed and counted bacterial colonies and extracted genomic DNA. Presentation topics by other faculty included communicating policy to the public, current and upcoming interplanetary missions, policy and guidelines for hardware designers, and lessons learned in implementing planetary protection. The course was held in Nov. 2006 at Kennedy Space Center, FL.
"Alien Earths" Museum Exhibit
"Alien Earths" is a traveling exhibit developed by the Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO and hosted last winter by the Yale University Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven CT. The exhibit focuses on four themes closely related to Astrobiology: Our Place in Space, Star and Planet Formation, Planet Quest and Search for Life. NAI supported Michele Bahr?s co-facilitation of a one day workshop for science teachers which included 20 educators enrolled in Southern Connecticut University?s MS program ?Institute for Science Instruction and Study? (ISIS). Bahr facilitated the microbial area of the exhibit, emphasizing the diversity of microbial metabolism as it relates to our search for life on other planets, while Cherilynn Morrow, SETI Institute, focused on best practices in teaching astronomy concepts and current research in the field. As a follow-up, the ISIS group visited MBL, toured the sequencing facility central to NAI team research and spoke with former NAI postdoctoral fellow and current NAI Co-I Julie Huber.
"Living in the Microbial World" Teachers Workshop
Living in the Microbial World is a one-week intensive hands-on workshop for middle and high school teachers, grades 6-12. Our objective is to prepare middle and high school teachers to teach students and other teachers about the importance of the microbial world by incorporating hands-on microbiology activities into existing curricula. Dr. Brad Bebout from NASA Ames Research Center collaborates by guiding a field trip, conducting laboratory measurements of microbial mat metabolisms, and introducing teachers to biogeochemical transformations. Resident and visiting scientists from within the Woods Hole community present teachers with background information and current research developments on topics related to the importance of diversity of microbes in natural environments and microbial processes in the biosphere. Teachers heard lectures from research scientists, including NAI's Julie Huber and Virginia Edgcomb, highlighting the role of microbes in maintaining the biosphere, the origin of ecosystems, extremophiles, protist diversity, fungal biology, and symbiosis. The teaching laboratory was the center of the workshop, engaging the teachers in easy and inexpensive hands-on activities that exemplify basic principles of microbiology and could easily ne transferred to their classrooms. They took field trips to the MBL's Marine Resources Center and the Great Sippiwissett Marsh in Falmouth. Days were structured to include one lecture per day, and the balance of the time was spent doing hands-on activities in the lab. Evening sessions highlighting available Internet and video resources and a tour of the Bay Paul Center DNA sequencing facility. Activities included: an investigation of fungal biology using an inquiry approach; culturing of basidiomycetes using sawdust culture techniques; making simple agar media; soil sample dilutions; mesuring oxygen profiles in microbial mats, making Winogradsky columns; construction of plankton nets, Uhlig extractors, and coverslip traps for collecting microorganisms; observation of termite hindgut microbes; and demonstration of the effects of naturally produced antibiotics on microbial growth. Three lab options involving culture of bacteria and slime molds were offered simultaneously: culture and isolation of luminescent bacteria, culture and isolation of lactic acid bacteria, and investigation of slime mold behavior. Culture and isolation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from alfalfa sprouts was also demonstrated. Astrobiology teaching materials were highlighted in an evening of demonstration of the website micro*scope and an exploration of other Astrobiology URLs. Teachers received copies of the Educators Resource Guide, the "Life on Earth and Elsewhere?" poster and the Carnegie Institute "Voyages of Discovery" poster. Course material can be viewed online though the Microbial Life Educational Resources website. This annual workshop is offered to teachers from throughout the U.S.
NASA/JSU Workshop on Astrobiology
Jackson State University's Educator Resource Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration offer opportunities for Mississippi and Louisiana educators to enhance teaching skills through a variety of workshops. Michele Bahr presented "Astrobiology: Life on Earth and Beyond" whcih covered Planetary Evolution, Earth timeline, evolution of life, extreme environments, habitable planets and NASA space missions. Materials related to the "Alien Earths" exhibit and the Voyages Through Time high school curriculum were distributed, along with the Educators Resource Guide and Astrobiology poster, and NASA EPO websites were featured.
Astrobiology kiosk at the RI Museum of Natural History
"Get Extreme!" is on display at Roger Williams Park Museum of Natural History and Planetarium, Providence, RI. Images for the exhibit were provided by the URI NAI team. The "Discovering New Worlds of Life" kiosk developed by the CIW team was transported and now serves as a centerpiece at the site
Microbes@NASA DVD
Microbial mats are living examples of the most ancient biological communities on Earth. As Earth?s earliest ecosystems, they are centrally important to understanding the history of life on our planet and are useful models for the search for life elsewhere. ?Stromatolite Explorer?, available at the Microbes@NASA website (http://microbes.arc.nasa.gov) and now on a DVD, takes the viewer on an animated ride through a microbial mat. Standards- based lesson plans, images and science background complete this DVD, along with links for setting up real-time experiments in a research laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center.
"River of Fire" videocon
Bernhard Beck-Winchatz organized a two week teachers workshop on Astrobiology at De Paul University, Chicago, IL. Linda Amaral Zettler participated in the workshop via NAI Webex link. She showed a power point about her research at the Rio Tinto, a highly acidic mine drainage site in southwestern Spain and took questions directly from the teachers in a highly interactive format. Michele Bahr followed with a demonstration of classroom activities that can be used to explore any aquatic environment.
Brown University Outreach
Grad student Joe Levy gave a lecture entitled "Earth and Mars: Geological Evidence for Climate Change on Two Worlds" at the RI Space Grant Symposium April 28th, along with related talks at local schools through Space Grant. Another student, Jay Dickson, gave two talks on getting to Antarctica and surviving in Antarctica with reference to Mars; the first talk, which also featured many images of penguins in Antarctica, was presented to a 3rd grade class in Falls Church, VA on March 23rd, the other was part of a Saturday night lecture series for a senior citizens group on March 24th.
Brown University Courses
Co-I James Head presented: "Geological Evidence for recent Climate Change on Mars", Seminar in the Ecole Normale Superieure Geology Department, University of Paris-Sud, January 18th and "Tropical Glaciers on Mars", Geological Society of Washington, April 11th. Head also taught a Brown course on "Special Topics in Antarctic Research" with 6 students examining the Dry Valleys of Antarctica as a process model for Mars, Sept 4, 2006-Dec. 21 2006.
MA Space Grant
EPO lead Michele Bahr is the MBL representative to MA Space Grant. She reviewed national/international student applications to the Planetary Biology Internship program, and lectured on Microbial Diversity to Tufts University students enrolled in W. Waller's "Astrobiology" ourse.
University of North Carolina Outreach
Graduate student Karen Lloyd judged the National Ocean Sciences Bowl for NC high school students at the Institute for Marine Sciences, Morehead City, NC on February 24, 2007. Lloyd developed a one-day workshop "Introduction to Oceanography and the Study of Extreme Life" for Culbreth Middle School, Chapel Hill, NC, with ~100 students attending. Lloyd and Teske mentored the following UNC undergraduate students: -Zoe Manikam (Spring 2007), reverse transcription and amplification of rRNA from methane seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. - Michelle Ostrowski, (Summer 2006), a high resolution study of the archaea associated with anaerobic methane oxidation in a 1 m long core from the Gulf of Mexico. She examined small subunit 16S ribosomal RNA as well as functional gene transcripts to determine which populations of putative anaerobic methane oxidizers are present and active within the sulfate-methane transition zone as well as below it. - Yushih Lin (Summer 2006), PhD student at the University of Bremen, Germany, came to UNC-CH to learn the techniques of RNA extraction, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) that can be used for analysis of Ocean Drilling Program cores from Cascadia, off the coast of Oregon. Karen Lloyd, Mark Lever and Jennifer Biddle mentored Justin Blair and Duke Cheston, two UNC undergraduates, as they extracting DNA from marine sediments and attempting to assess the microbial and metabolic diversity using molecular methods.
Discover the Microbes Within!
The main focus of our education activities in the past few years was a professional development workshop entitled Discover the Microbes Within: The Wolbachia Project. This three-day workshop, held in 2005 and 2006 at the Marine Biological Laboratory, featured laboratory training and content background on insect collection and systematics, DNA extraction, PCR to detect Wolbachia symbiont DNA, gel electrophoresis, and bioinformatics tools through NCBI. This workshop trained a total of 48 teachers, and impacted over a 1000 students. Several teachers received private foundation awards last year to fully implement the lab series in their 9th-12th grade classrooms. Major topics covered in The Wolbachia project lab series include Microbiology, Biodiversity, Evolution, Systematics, Biotechnology, and Bioinformatics. Each of the lab modules in this project are designed to be either individually incorporated into daily lesson plans addressing National Science Education Standards or as a coherent unit progressively emphasizing the nature of long-term science throughout the school year.
We achieved three major advancements from 2006-2007.
(i) Additional funding ? By leveraging the accomplishments described above, we were awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute award to direct a Precollege Science Education Program on Discover the Microbes Within over the next five years. This funding will allow the MBL program to continue to train teachers and the next generation of scientists using NAI concepts such as complex life and coevolution of microbial communities.
(ii) Loudon County Schools, VA - We implemented an in-service training workshop on the lab series with George Wolfe and Jackie Curley of the Academy of Science, Sterling VA. We organized and taught a two day hands-on lab series for 16 AP Biology teachers representing 10 high schools in Loundon County, VA. The teachers agreed that the Discover the Microbes Within: The Wolbachia Project would be implemented county-wide in May 2007, after the AP Biology test. Bordenstein visited Loudon County schools from May 20-22, 2007 to introduce the project to over 460 AP Biology students.
(iii) Falmouth High School, MA ? We implemented the lab series for 40 AP Biology students in Falmouth High School, MA. This effort was coordinated with Science Department Head, Ms. Christine Brothers, a recipient last year of a Mass BioTeach Biotechnology grant. This award funded equipment and consumables for this biotechnology rich lab series, including centrifuges, pipettes, gel electrophoresis units, and reagents. With this award, Ms. Brothers implemented the lab series after the students took their AP Biology test. Bordenstein lectured to the Falmouth High School students on May 23, 2007 to start the lab series and provide a direct link to science in the local community. He also helped manage the labs on May 24, 2007. Students reported the collection of over eight different local insect orders and discovered that half of their sampled insects were positive for Wolbachia symbionts.
(iv) Internet Resources - A website was developed to facilitate dissemination of the lesson plans (http://research.amnh.org/FIBR/workshops.html). The workshop is growing steadily by working closely with teachers to facilitate the running of the labs. Our goal is to make this Wolbachia lab series a nationally, recognized project that covers biotechnology, scientific inquiry, and microbial symbionts.
(v) High School Volunteers ? We mentored two volunteer high school students in the summer of 2007. Merry Better is a senior high school student who PCR-surveyed bacteriophage in Wolbachia endosymbionts during July-September 2006 and returned this summer to study the evolution of endosymbionts. Andrew Johnson is a junior high school student who is currently studying the mechanisms of Wolbachia functions in insects.
University of Southern California Outreach
Edwards and Edwards laboratory members have been involved in educational and outreach activities as follows Edwards met visited the Mullen Hall Elementary School (Falmouth, MA) in 2006, and the Arroyo Vista Elementary School (South Pasadena, CA) in 2007 and used materials from past and recent cruises to discuss oceanic research and microbiology. She lectured to K-2-3-and 4th graders in everal classrooms. Edwards is supporting female minority REU student Grizelda Soto this summer (May-Aug. 2007) and a Korean American male REU (Ryan Chun). Edwards has recruited a male minority graduate student (Roman Barco) who will be starting his project on NAI-related work in the fall of 2007. In general the Edwards lab represent a broad cross section of diversity in terms of gender and ethnicity, which we strive for explicity. Edwards and Orcutt presented lectures on this project for the USC REU program (summer 2007) to introduce undergraduates to the field of geomicrobiology. Edwards gave the following invited lectures outside of her affiliated institution, all which had some component of this project presented: 2007 "Geobiology of Fe in the deep ocean: iron oxidation, mineral transformations, and hydrothermal processes". Cal Tech, Earth and Planetary Sciences Department Seminar, May 14. "The oceanic basalt biotope: A model for early Earth microbial ecosystems" Darwin Days, Koningshof, Veldhoven, the Netherlands, April 27. "The oceanic basalt biotope: Microbial life in and on the ocean crust" University of California, Berkeley, Microbial Biology Seminar Series, Berkeley, CA April 10. "Microbiologically mediated rock weathering - at and below the seafloor" Sanford University Ocean Sciences Seminar Series, Palo Alto, CA. 2006 "How to write an IODP proposal", Exploring the Deep Biosphere with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, Subseafloor Life Workshop, Vancouver, Canada, Oct. 4. "Microbial communities harbored in ocean crust - where, why, and how to drill in hard rock for deep biosphere research", International Society for Microbial Ecology General Meeting, Vienna, Austria. Aug. 22. "Ocean crust alteration and the deep ocean Fe cycle" International Society for Microbial Ecology General Meeting, Vienna, Austria. Aug. 24. "Geomicrobiology in oceanography: Mineral-microbe interactions in the deep-sea" Annual Meeting of the International Census of Marine Microbes, NH Leeuwenhorst Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands "Rock habitats and the deep-ocean Fe cycle: An extremely average microbial lifestyle in the deep-sea" American Society for Microbiology General Meeting, Orlando FL. Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Seamounts Biogeoscience Network workshop, La Jolla CA, USA "Microbiologically mediated rock weathering - at and below the seafloor", Harvard University Earth History and Paleobiology Seminar, Cambridge MA.
Additional Activities: In May 2007 we held a meeting between closest collaborators on the Loihi project in La Jolla, California. This meeting included general science presentations and discussion, cruise planning for 2007, website and data base planning and outreach activities that revolve principally around the 2007 cruise and web site activities.
University of Southern California Courses
Edwards taught one week (6 lectures) of the Chilian Austral Summer Institute course in Benthic Geology and Microbiology, Dichato, Chile.
American Society of Microbiology General Meeting
EPO lead Michele Bahr presented "Microbes, Mats and the Search for Life: Astrobiology Resources for Educators" during a poster session at the ASM General Meeting.
Plymouth Schools Oceanography Studies
The Plymouth MA school district continued its second year of its innovative seventh grade Ocean Studies curriculum based on science standards (Plymouth Schools Oceanography Studies, PSOS). Micro*scope education specialist Sarah Bordenstein and team members Michele Bahr and Linda Amaral Zettler presented science content and student activities which emphasized the diversity and importance of microbial life in the ocean to the teachers in a series of Aug. workshops. In the Spring, all seventh grade students in the district spent a field day onboard the "floating classroom" sponsored by Capt. John boats. The students sampled with plankton tows, "protist catchers", and sand and sediment collections. Subsequent classroom activities included construction of Winogradsky columns and microscope observations. Students were able to access the micro*scope website and were encouraged to develop their own class micro*scope web page.
MBL Outreach
Linda Amaral Zettler, Seth Bordenstein and Michele Bahr are active in Project SEpTeMber, an initiative of the Falmouth Superintendent of Schools to foster preeminence in K-12 STEM education for Falmouth Public Schools. The MBL team members have continued to meet with School Supt. Richards and the Woods Hole Science & Technology Education Partnership (WHSTEP)to discuss programs and proposals which would expand community capacity to support K-12 STEM education. Team member Jennifer Wernegreen acts as the MBL liason to WHSTEP. She and her lab are very much involved in forging links between linking local grade school programs and research activities in Woods Hole. These activities include bringing Woods Hole scientists into the classroom to help students develop independent science projects, and to serve as counselors for science fair competitions. Several members of the NAI team have joined the WHSTEP Registry of Science Outreach Volunteers (ROV). This internet-based directory allows local teachers to find scientists who are willing to assist with specific educational programs. MBL scientists also mentor middle and high school science fair projects in Falmouth Public Schools and Falmouth Academy. Michele Bahr hosted 100 students from Takoma Park Middle School, Silver Springs, MD. Their visit to Boston and Woods Hole was a culminating experience of their science magnet school experience. Bahr also focuses on STEM subjects as an Adult Basic Education instructor with Cape Cod and Bristol Community Colleges and the Barnstable House of Corrections. She has facilitated Teachers Investigating Adult Numeracy, Teacher to Teacher:Exploring Math and ABE teacher workshops.
MBL Courses
Team members Mitchell Sogin and Stefan Sievert lectured on their most recent Astrobiology research in the summer Microbial Diversity Course at the MBL. The course is designed primarily for scientists with a substantial background in microbiology who want to isolate, cultivate, and initiate research programs with a diverse range of microbes. The emphasis of the course is on the variety of metabolic pathways and the range of environmental habitats occupied by microbes, similar to the questions posed by NAI. Sogin spoke about the "Microbial population sturcture of the world's oceans: an underexplored 'rare biosphere'".
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