$60,900 GRANT CONNECTS TEACHERS, STUDENTS AT MSUM & DETROIT LAKES H.S. FOR RESEARCH ON HOW CELLS MOVE
Biochemistry and biotechnology program faculty Joseph Provost and Mark Wallert received $60,900 in grants from the National Science Foundation and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology to bring high school teachers and students to MSUM to research how lung cells move.
For the next two years, faculty and students at Detroit Lakes High School and MSUM will work on a project which investigates how proteins found at the surface of the cell regulate cell movement. The teachers and high school students will work with the genes for a membrane protein called the sodium hydrogen exchanger and determine how other proteins stick to the this protein at front edge of a moving lung cell. The Detroit Lakes High School team will be partnered with faculty and students from MSUM to plan and work on the experiments.
The MSUM professors put together the project to support a collaborative research program for five weeks during the two summers and to create a workshop to bring biochemistry and biotechnology to the local high school. Its goal is to build connections between teachers and students in secondary schools and colleges.
The project also includes considerable research collaborations during the school year plus the development of a workshop to teach biochemistry and biotechnology skills to classes at Detroit Lakes High School next spring.
The project involves Wallert and Provost and two teachers from Detroit Lakes High School, Vicki Welke and Stan Richter, along with two students from Detroit Lakes and one from MSUM.
The grant includes funds to purchase equipment and reagents for their continuing collaborative research both on campus and at Detroit Lakes High School.