Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am a high school student that needs to come up with a science fair project idea by October 31st. I have always enjoyed doing labs in classes such as biology and chemistry however I am not sure what my project should be focused on. One possible idea for my project would be a bacteria transformation experiment. I was thinking about taking an experiment and modifying it so that the bacteria could produce something new and more useful. One other topic of which I am interested in is how yeast can be used to make biofuels. Over the summer I participated in a Biotechnology Camp in which we visited Amyris in Emeryville. I was fascinated with the technology that was used in order to modify the yeast cells in order to make them produce ethanol. However I was wondering if it is possible to modify the yeast cells so that something other than ethanol could be produced. Thank you.

Hi juann_23,

Welcome to Science Buddies! Have you tried the Topic Selection Wizard to help you choose a project?
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndaproject

Here is a Science Buddies project in which you measure the efficiency of bacterial transformation:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p013.shtml
You could use the methods of this project and modify them to fit your idea.

This Science Buddies project uses different kinds of materials to produce biogas:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p027.shtml
Perhaps you could modify this to see if yeast could make biofuels.

I hope this helps you get started. Please post again (in this same thread) if you have more questions.

Heather

Thank you for your help,
I am on my research phase of my experiment still and I have found the sample experiments to be useful in coming up with an idea for my project. One that really caught my eye was the Bacterial Transformation Efficiency project. I would like to follow some of the steps in this experiment however I want to make the bacteria transform into something different.
Thank you for your time,
-Juan

Hi Juan,

Here is a link to information from Bio-Rad about how to insert your gene of interest into a plasmid (piece of DNA that you can use to transform bacteria):
http://www.bio-rad.com/webroot/web/pdf/ ... 665019.pdf

I hope that helps!

Heather

Hello Heather,

This year i'm doing the bacterial transformation efficiency project. I will be doing this project in a college nearby. The only problem i have before experimenting is creating a problem and purpose that fits my hypothesis : If I increase the amount of pGlo plasmid 10X, then the number of bacterial colonies will increase.

So far for my problem I have : It can be very expensive to chemically synthesize very short peptides, never mind complex polypeptides and whole proteins which may have post-translational modifications. As the biology of bacteria becomes clearer, coupled with the abundance of bacterial species and strains available and the exciting advances made in molecular biology research and biotechnology, the possibilities and applicability of transformation becomes phenomenal.

So far for my purpose I have : Transformation in and of itself is a very important basic tool in molecular biology. Transformation is used for cloning or to move DNA molecules around between strains. Bacteria are transformed for numerous different reasons. Some of these reasons may include expression of medically useful recombinant proteins such as insulin for treating a disease or vaccines for prevention of disease. Other reasons could be expression of proteins that confer on bacteria the ability to survive in particular environments such as to "clean up" contaminated environments in bioremediation.


But i don't think my purpose and problem link to the experiment. What steps should i take to get a good problem and purpose.

I will appreciate your fast reply,
-Arnlan