Another Season in AP Biology has come and gone in a flash, but has also been comprised of plenty of long days of work. Season 7 was about Biotechnology, a field in science that blends the use of technology in order to modify how organisms work, such as in bacteria or hormones that are produced. A very important lab that my teammates and I performed this season was the pGLO lab, where we inserted a plasmid into bacteria in the hopes of making the bacteria grow and glow on a plate of agar containing LB, Arabinose, and Ampicillin. This lab was definitely one of my highlights for the season because we had been working very hard in order to understand the process of bacterial transformation, and I felt very rewarded when plenty of colonies of bacteria grew and glowed under UV light.
Going along with the topic of biotechnology, Mrs. Girard invited a former NDB student, Mana Anvar ’14, to come into our classroom and talk about her work with studying zebrafish in hopes of finding a medicine that would best treat Dravet Syndrome, which is caused by a mutation on the SCN1A gene. I found this work very interesting because of her use of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology, where she was able to cut out the DNA of the zebrafish and test different medicine on the pieces she cut out. I also look up to her because of how hard she has worked in school, through studying at UC Berkley and majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology, and later doing a graduate program at UCSF. She has even been able to combine her passions of biology, journalism, and law by never waiting for an opportunity to come to her, and I hope to as driven as her in the future.
Works Cited:
YouTube, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZyFX9megs8.
AP Biology with Kristen 
I enjoyed this blog post because it was interesting to see your results from the bacterial transformation lab that you did. It seems like it was a success! It is also cool that your teacher invited a past NDB Student whose work is very inspirational. It’s great that you all had an opportunity to hear from her. She seems like a great role model for you girls and is an example of how you should always go after your goals and with hard work, you can achieve them!
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