Sujatha Jagannathan, PhD, shuffles 11 Petri dishes around a table, sorting them in groups according to how fast the yeast strains grew in the cultures. Her student researchers look on, scanning the culture dishes for the mutant strains they created four days earlier that grew the slowest.
Using the yeast model, the researchers hope to unravel secrets behind mRNA quality control, a process that ensures the billions of proteins produced in the body every day are created correctly. When that system goes rogue, debilitating and deadly diseases can arise.
“It’s sort of like a process that takes care of the cells’ trash,” said Jagannathan, an assistant professor and biochemistry and molecular genetics researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “If it doesn’t work, you start littering the cell with trash, and you start making bad proteins. Then really bad things happen.”
Her lab’s scientists have worked long hours to find the potentially game-changing answers behind what causes the flaws. But her new recruits that day, just over three months into their experiment, were a unique group, conducting research few students their age have the chance to perform.
Jagannathan wins NSF grant that funds project
“She’s been able to teach us the different lab methods, for example, taking DNA out of yeast and putting different proteins into it,” Isis Casareno, a 10th-grader at Aurora Science and Tech High School (AST), said of Jagannathan. “It’s pretty cool we get to learn all of that in a club,” Casareno said, as the students broke into small groups to work on a poster about their research.
During their two afternoons a week, when Jagannathan visits the charter STEM school just blocks from her own lab on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, the students have been conducting a real science research project, learning lab techniques from DNA extraction to gel electrophoresis.
“These are things we can use later on,” said Casareno, who said the experience has reaffirmed her career goal of one day being a cellular and molecular biologist with an oncology focus at, she hopes, CU Anschutz.
Jagannathan recruited the bioscience club members to work on her research after proposing the project as part of an early-career award from the National Science Foundation, which she recently won. The $1.3 million prize, acknowledging scientists for their outstanding research and outreach as science role models, will help fund the project.
Learning through inquiry and firsthand experience
Steven Denham, PhD, club director and AST biomedical science teacher, said the project offers his students valuable opportunities working with professional scientists, particularly doing university graduate-level research as young teenagers.
“This is allowing them to explore science by doing science, which is really enforcing the way that we are trying to shift our science education at this level – moving away from just textbooks and memorization and more toward inquiry and project-based learning,” Denham said.
The students said they appreciate Jagannathan and know her guidance has given them a step ahead in their endeavors, whether by enhancing college resumes or creating standout poster projects.
“She’s helping us build a connection to something that most students wouldn’t have access to,” said ninth-grader Izabelle Fernandez, referring to the high-level science as well as the broader campus faculty, resources and activities.
Partnerships open doors and minds
Inspired by her grandmother’s care at the CU Cancer Center a few years ago, Casareno originally wanted to become an oncologist. But last year, her school joined “Learn About Cancer Day” at CU Anschutz, and she decided research was her channel to helping cancer patients.
“We took lab tours that opened my eyes to other careers in the medical field,” she said. “I was wowed by all the research that was going on with the cancer cells, and all the different components that go into the research.”
As AST grows, so will the benefits of being one of only a handful of schools in the nation to sit on a medical campus, Denham said. Located in the Fitzsimons Innovation Community, the school is the first DSST high school in Aurora and opened with its inaugural freshman class for the 2022-23 school year.
“Next year, we’ll have juniors who are going to start figuring out their internships, and a lot of them will take place on the CU Anschutz campus,” Denham said. “That could include not just research experiences but shadowing medical professionals or working in other aspects of healthcare. Then they’ll really get a sense for what careers can be like.”
‘A whole different level’ of curiosity
Jagannathan, who first worked with eighth-grade girls as a graduate student at Duke University, said she’s always considered role modeling and opening young minds to science an important part of her career. “It’s exposing them to careers and giving them the confidence that this is something they can do.”
“This is allowing them to explore science by doing science, which is really enforcing the way that we are trying to shift our science education at this level – moving away from just textbooks and memorization and more toward inquiry and project-based learning.” – Steven Denham, PhD
And the rewards make it worth it, she said. “They bring a lot of curiosity that we kind of lose as we grow older. I mean, scientists are naturally curious. But kids have a whole different level to it. They ask a lot of: How does this work? Why? Why not? What if?” she said, using an example that happened during an earlier session with the bioscience club students.
“I asked them: How can you tell which yeast took up the DNA?” Their minds started churning, and different answers were being thrown out, when one student said: “What if you could make the yeast that took up the DNA be a different color from the yeast that didn’t take up the DNA?” Jagannathan said.
“Well, that is a real thing that we do in labs. They had no idea. They just came up with it. It’s kind of amazing to see their minds are not limited by all the things ours are. The more you know, sometimes the less you’re able to imagine. And they don’t have that. They just think very openly. That gives me a lot of energy.”
Program’s aim: building bridges to the future
Both Denham and Jagannathan hope the project serves as a model for more partnerships throughout the Aurora community with CU Anschutz, which Denham describes as a treasure trove of resources for K-12 educators left largely untapped.
“It’s kind of amazing to see their minds are not limited by all the things ours are. The more you know, sometimes the less you’re able to imagine. And they don’t have that. They just think very openly.” – Sujatha Jagannathan, PhD
“It’s really valuable for us to be able to bridge that gap between secondary education and higher education,” Denham said, adding that it’s mutually beneficial for the K-12 students to get a glimpse of what their future education will look like and for university faculty to see what their future students are learning.
While she said she hopes to see some of the students she’s working with in her lab someday as interns and fellow researchers, Jagannathan said it’s OK if they choose different paths. “At least if they gain the confidence that they can be scientists, and that stays with them, then I’m happy.”
Photo at top (left to right): Isis Casareno, Leonardo Ortiz and Izabelle Fernandez watch CU Anschutz research Sujatha Jagannathan, PhD, as she sorts cultures and talks with the students about the results.
