THE PULSE | MAY 2026 ISSUE
ADVENTURES AT REGENERON On Tuesday, April 7, the Honors Biology students at The Harvey School went on a field trip to the biotechnology company known as Regeneron. This trip was led by Upper School science teachers Ms. Silverstein and Ms. Tantillo, along with Ms. Kreiness, the marketing and communications department associate. Each class took a van to the research center, which is located in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The groups left at around 8:10 a.m. and returned at around noon. According to Ms. Silverstein, “We went to the DNA learning center, which Regeneron sponsors, and they provide educational resources for high school and college students to come and get to actually do some hands-on experiments with genetics.”
By Aiden Tarpey When we first arrived, all the students were taken to a lobby before being greeted by an education coordinator. Ms. Silverstein took us to a classroom with various lab equipment and explained that we would be working with E. coli bacteria and learning how the bacteria transformation process actually works. Everyone was split into groups of two, with the exception of having a single group of three due to an odd number of students present. Once the groups were formed, the instructor taught us how to use micropipettes, which are tube-like tools that are designed to pick up precise amounts of a liquid, and we began to explain the procedure for the lab. After we all learned how to use the micropipettes, we filled two tubes per group with 250 microliters (µL) of calcium chloride (CaCl2). One tube was labeled “PBlu,” and the other was labeled “-PBlu.” Then, each group took a sample from a petri dish containing E. coli, placed it in the two separate tubes, capped the tubes, and put them on ice. Then, 10 µL of the substance PBlu was added to the “PBlu” labelled tube, with students tapping against the tubes to make sure that there were not any bubbles.
Honors Bio Students Standing in Front of the Entrance to Regeneron Image Credit: Ms. Kristine Kreiness / The Harvey School
Each group received four petri dishes and labeled them "X-Gal PBlu,” “X-Gal -,” “LB PBlu,” and “LB -” with the group number written on them. The tubes then experienced heat shock, which was dipping them in extremely hot water for a minute and a half before taking them out.
After being removed from the water, the substances were placed into the corresponding petri dishes. Students put 100 µL of the “PBlu” tube’s substance in the “X-Gal PBlu” and “LB PBlu” dishes and 100 µL of the “-PBlu” tube’s contents in the “X-Gal -” and “LB -” dishes.
A minimum of three sterile glass beads were put in each petri dish before moving the plates side to side multiple times to spread out the bacteria from the tubes. The plates were then taped together before being stored away.
In an interview with The Pulse, Ms. Silverstein, the organizer of the field trip, answered several questions about the field trip process, including what the students learned and how the trip came to be in the first place. When asked about the origins of the field trip, Ms. Silverstein stated, “Someone from the DNA learning center had actually reached out last year, as they received my email contact as a local teacher in the area. We weren’t able to do the trip last year,” she continued. “This year, when I was presenting at a conference in the fall, there were some representatives from the DNA learning center there. So I made some connections with them and then reached out to set up a field trip, especially after I had the chance to talk to the people and see what a trip would look like and get some more background from them.”
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