Applied Genetics Research Comes to MA

from NEXUS 2024 - Marin Academy

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If you happened by MA's Science and Innovation Center in the summer of 2022, you might have noticed a classroom that looked a bit like a mad fly lab. You may have even seen Bryn Rowles '23 in the Design Lab 3D printing and laser cutting her own specialized equipment, searching for tiny amputation tools, or Zooming with her mentor at Harvard. This work was all part of her Marin Academy Research Collaborative (MARC) Independent STEM Research (ISR) project on limb regeneration in fruit flies. These tiny creatures are more than simply pests that hover around your over-ripe fruit—they are model organisms that can help researchers understand more about disease in the human body.

Fast forward to today, and the MARC program, led by alum and biologist Amy Strauss '05, is in its seventh year at MA. The longer-standing wing of the two-pronged MARC program, a two-year, independent STEM research program supports students in building strong science literacy and research skills, and it empowers our young researchers to partner with the scientific community to contribute meaningfully to relevant research in their selected fields of interest. There is a high demand for the coveted 16 MARC ISR spaces, with an acceptance rate of about 35%.

Our MARCers, as we have affectionately nicknamed them, have earned some impressive exposure and success. MARC ISR alum Norah Wolk '23's project about reactivating mindfulness during sleep to induce lucid dreams gave her the opportunity to present at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2023 conference. She recently published her research in the International Journal of Dream Research, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, where she was the lead author of the paper, "Lucid dreams from reactivating mindfulness during REM sleep: a pilot study." She's currently an undergraduate at Barnard, working in a cognitive neuroscience research lab and studying memory processing in the brain.

Another recent MARC ISR alum Nate Maretzki '24 showcased his groundbreaking work in space research to 25,000 researchers from 100+ countries at the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. A collaborative effort with NASA mentor Steve Bryson and fellow MARC ISR alum Tor Svendsen '23, Nate's research involved refining methods for validating exoplanet candidates. He also endeavored to take on a second MARC ISR project during his time in the program. In his MARC ISR blog, he said of his effort, "While I understand that this is highly unusual for a MARC ISR student to attempt two different projects during the program, I believe that with the right time management and a sacrificial offering of my senior year sleep schedule, it is achievable." True to his word, he presented two projects at the MARC Wildcat Colloquium—our culminating

MARC Independent STEM Research symposium—his other project consisting of researching the sustainability of camping management in the desolation wilderness, which will soon be submitted for publication in The Journal of Environmental Management.

When Marin Academy's Head of School, Travis Brownley, received an email from Stanford Professor Seung Kim M.D., Ph.D. inquiring whether MA was interested in bringing his renowned Stan-X fruit fly genetics program to MA, she connected him with MARC coordinator, Amy Strauss '05.

Stan-X's mission to allow science students to make actual discoveries, rather than simply studying the scientific discoveries made by others, is certainly aligned with the MARC program's mission to engage students in cutting-edge science and engineering research, and Amy thought it might just be what MA was looking for to expand MARC to more students. Here was an opportunity to include more structured and collaborative research that would enable students to engage in applied genetics research (AGR) using fruit flies, a widely used model organism.

In preparation for bringing this hands-on, real-world genetics research to MA, alumna Amy—along with science teacher and Penn Fellow Maribel Albarran and former lab technician Jennifer Moreno—traveled to the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey to learn the theory and practice of the Stan-X curriculum. The Stan-X teaching academy team worked with each educator to tailor the implementation of their courses specifically to application at Marin Academy during an intensive, hands-on, five-day training on the lab skills necessary to run the Stan-X program.

Amy and Maribel were awarded MA's Edward E. Ford Fellowship—a grant that encourages educators to grow and develop in pursuit of potentially influential projects—to support their work this year in building the AGR curriculum for the fall 2024 launch. While research on fruit flies won't be brand new to MA, the addition of AGR will be. MA's inaugural MARC AGR cohort of 12 students will be ready to create new genetic fruit fly lineages that, if successful, can be used by scientists worldwide working to find cures for disease. Hopefully, this time around it will look a little less like a mad fly lab.