A Student High School Poster Exposition was held on March 25, 2014, in conjunction with 53rd Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting
Back when I was in high school……………sigh…………..our science projects did not involve measuring lung function, assessing changes in gene expression in rat liver, or looking at changes in DNA secondary structure in response to potential treatments targeting the KRAS promoter in pancreatic cancer. Our complex computational tool was Encyclopedia Britannica………. But I digress.
Tuesday morning found me in the presence of 13 high school students from right around the corner in Phoenix and as far away as Durham, NC (TX, LA, MD, VA were also proudly represented). I was glad to be asked to “view the posters and interact with the students,” rather than to “judge the posters”……because the latter would have been really tough. These kids have really taken advantage of whatever resources (human and physical) to which they had access and presented the results of very interesting research projects. Gone are the days of waiting for bean seedlings to wilt after application of whatever Mom had under the kitchen sink—these were very sophisticated research projects. From each presenter (or presenting team), I learned the background of their projects, the question that they were asking/hypothesis that they were testing, their methods (most of them seem really excited about this part!), and finally the results.
Most were aware of the scientific method, importance of replicates, etc. I was impressed! For example, from Heba Haleem (Chandler, AZ), I learned that inhaled arsenic decreases collagen expression in and impairs the function of developing lungs. Justin Chang (Durham, NC) told me about his efforts to identify novel gene transcripts in rat liver following treatment with low doses of aflatoxin B1. It turns out that there are still unknown transcripts out there, and Justin hopes that one of them might be a useful early biomarker of liver carcinogenesis. It was humbling to learn that there is a high school student out there who knows more about the KRAS promoter that I have forgotten, but Natalie Van Ert is just that person, and she described her project dealing with drugs that alter DNA secondary structure of this promoter as a potential novel means to identify drugs that are potential chemotherapeutics for pancreatic cancer. The survival rate for this cancer is very low (less than 10% of those diagnosed live for 5 years thereafter), and she has found some drugs that work in vitro, so let’s hope that her intital efforts make it into the clinic to tackle this very grave condition.
These are just a few of the many projects I viewed, and I thank all of the students (and their mentors) for their time and effort to come to the meeting, post and present their results, and interact with the more senior scientists at the meeting. While not all of the students expressed an interest in pursuing a career in research, (I heard of other career goals ranging from medicine to philosophy), the training that they have received in the scientific method and presenting their results will translate well into whatever fields they eventually decide to pursue. And who knows……when we’re old and approaching senility, perhaps one of them will come up to us and ask “…….do you remember me……I told you about my project ‘Tesla with Time’ at the SOT Annual Meeting in Phoenix…..”—wouldn’t that be great!!