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‘Python Project’ helps undergraduates see if grad-school laboratory research, medical school or other alternatives are right for them; it also helps the university effectively allocate graduate-school funds

At the �鶹��Ѱ�����, 16 undergraduate students are gaining valuable lab experience that will help them determine if they should pursue the sciences in graduate or medical school, work in private laboratories, or even follow other educational paths.

The course, called the “Python Project,” allows undergraduates to pursue research in a laboratory setting—an experience that is normally available to very few undergraduate students and is usually reserved for graduate students.

With the cooperation of the Leslie Leinwand Lab (the course’s first instructor) within the BioFrontiers Institute, students measure RNA sequences of genes in Burmese pythons. The pythons, after feeding, undergo rapid growth and increased function in many organs and cellular functions, such as the heart and metabolism.

It is the hope that by studying these physiological changes scientists might be able to understand beneficial (physiological) heart growth and harmful growth (such as heart disease) in humans, and ways to treat the latter.

Unfortunately, the python genome is not as well annotated as other species’, so the sequences that control growth in python organs are not well-known. That’s where the students come in:

“The student’s job is to use a similar sequence like the same protein in a chicken or lizard, compare it to a python and try to assemble a transcript close to it,” Harvey explains. Transcription is the process by which the biological information stored in DNA is used to produce a complementary strand of RNA.

Experimenting with lab life

This experience aids students in deciding their future educational and career goals, assists the Leinwand Lab in gathering data, and points students toward an informed decision about spending money on graduate or medical school. The current course helps to avert a much larger cost in the future should less-informed students pursue post-grad studies and later realize it’s not what they expected.

Pam Harvey, the instructor of the Python Project course, believes the class is important for both students and the university. It helps students discern their career paths by giving them a snapshot of what working in a real lab doing research that may be used outside of the campus is like, and it aims to keep students in the sciences.

“There’s something between undergraduate and graduate school where we’re losing a ton of students,” says Harvey, adding, “even between freshman and senior year.” Harvey believes students aren’t given a realistic idea of what graduate school will be like before they commit.

The class was started about eight years ago and funded by a professorship awarded by Leslie Leinwand, now chief scientific officer of the BioFrontiers Institute at CU-Boulder, and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Once the initial funding ran out, an anonymous donor contributed an additional $50,000 for the class to continue.

“The course comes and goes depending on funding,” says Harvey. The class does not currently receive supply money from the CU-Boulder Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. However, the MCDB department is covering the instructor’s salary for the course—a cost that previously had to be absorbed by the grant and donations. Harvey says that development is “really big,” and frees money for the necessary materials for the course, and helps it to run longer.

The course is pricey: Most MCDB courses cost $32 per student, but the Python Project requires just under $300 per student to cover the materials.

However, as data are collected about the success of the course in helping retain students to continue in their pursuit of studies and careers in science, the MCDB department is becoming more open to the idea of funding the project

Harvey published a research����last fall with data on the success of the course and the current activities of the former students of the class. She found that not only are the data in the student lab helpful to the Leinwand Lab’s projects, but the course was also successful in retaining students in the sciences, with a majority of students continuing either their science research or medical school.

“The department is really warming up to the course,” says Harvey.

Most students who take the class have never had lab experience. Before enrolling, however, they complete a survey indicating whether they want to go to graduate school to earn a Ph.D., go to medical school or have yet to decide. Students who aren’t given the benefit of a research experience like in the Python Project class can be more costly in time and money down the road.

Harvey puts it this way: “Graduate school for a university is a huge investment, so if I’m going to invest $200,000 in you for five years, how do I know that you can tolerate being in a lab? That you can tolerate failure, which students in a regular class don’t typically get?”

At the end of the class, some students who were considering medical school decide they really liked doing research and decide to pursue graduate school instead.

Similarly, many students who were initially planning on graduate school shift into the unknown category because doing research wasn’t exactly what they expected. Lastly, the majority of the students who considered their future in science as unknown filter into the medical school and graduate school categories after they receive the benefit of a trial period pursuing one of the established career paths.

In a large department like MCDB, Harvey says it’s hard for students to get information: “Students aren’t thinking ahead to post-doctoral fellowships, or what to do to become a full professor,” Harvey explains.

“In the class we do a lot of talking about Ph.D. programs, and the students learn about the process and their options. For instance, students never think about becoming patent lawyers, but it is often a career where holding a Ph.D. is viewed as highly desirable.”

The students learn about graduate school and practical lab knowledge as well. One of the first exercises is to ensure students can properly pipette, a process that sometimes takes 12 to 15 hours for students to learn. And then there are the pythons.

A rigorous examination of pythons

Near the beginning of the course, students can attend an optional dissection of a Burmese python conducted by a member of the Leinwand Lab. “No students actually come into direct contact with the pythons,” says Harvey.

Each semester, Harvey, collaborating with the Leinwand Lab, comes up with a list of genes thought to be responsible for a specific function within the pythons. The class is somewhat fluid: Something new is researched each semester, from growth hormone signaling to mitochondria biogenesis.

“The overriding goal is to understand how the genes change,” says Harvey: “what proteins are responsible for some specific function, like making the heart big.”

All students focus on a similar process each semester but approach it in their own ways. Since they study 16 to 20 genes as a class, they function as a mini-screening lab for the Leinwand Lab, which is also interested in relating processes in the python’s hearts to human hearts.

"They’re not being graded day-to-day on research, but they are being ‘graded’ in a sense on how they maintain their lab notebookand how they present their information.”

Each semester, students present a public poster session to the MCDB department and BioFrontiers Institute. The environment is very similar to graduate studies, especially at the poster presentations, when students display their work for critique by colleagues and peers.

The assignments during the semester resemble what students would be expected to do if they were in graduate school or working in a lab.

“To me, the important things are the same things that would be important for a graduate student,” says Harvey. “They’re not being graded day-to-day on research, but they are being ‘graded’ in a sense on how they maintain their lab notebookand how they present their information.”

There are many similarities between the Python Project class and research as a graduate student. The most dreadful of these to an undergraduate: failure.

“About halfway through the semester, I start getting panicked emails,” says Harvey. “‘I think I’m failing the course.'”

Harvey offers a lot of encouragement to students and often tells them that success isn’t always measured in advancing a correct hypothesis, but rather in what conclusions can still be gleaned from a hypothesis that was proved incorrect.

Most students leave the Python Project with tangible lab skills that will help them get internships, jobs and acceptance to graduate programs. After the class, 95 percent of students agreed with the statement, “I prefer the structure of lab courses similar to the Python Project.”

Furthermore, 88 percent of students indicated that they had gained critical-thinking skills through the class.

Harvey, who tried to forgo a salary for the class to continue its run when funding dried up at one point, is excited that tangible results of student satisfaction and learning gains can be measured and reported.

“We would love for it to be offered every semester,” Harvey says.

With more helpful research being done on student retention, and as students spread word of their positive learning experience in the Python Project, that just may happen.

Magdalena Rost, a student majoring in classics and English, is an intern for Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine.