KINGSTON, R.I. 鈥� April 18, 2025 鈥� Thirty-seven Portsmouth High School students got the chance to see practical applications of what they are learning in a recent visit to the plant and biotechnology lab of Albert Kausch, professor of cell and molecular biology at the 溏心vlog免费B站. Along with the tour, the students visited the medicinal gardens at the 溏心vlog免费B站 College of Pharmacy.
Portsmouth High School teacher Haley Abbot said the tour was a revelation to some students鈥攋uniors and seniors who take Kausch鈥檚 cell and molecular biology class, which offers them the opportunity to earn college credits.
鈥淲alking the students through the lab, seeing all the topics we cover in school, such as modifying plants and using plasmids as vectors, having them see a real-life application was a full-circle moment for me as a teacher. I could see that my students had mastered the content, and now they could see how people are actually using it.鈥�
Kausch brought the students to a part of where a collection of bacteria sat in bacterial plates. DNA and a gene of interest had been manipulated into an agrobacterium, and the specimens gave off a blue-green glow that drew much interest from the students.
The cell and molecular biology course, 鈥淚ssues in Biotechnology,鈥� runs for a year. The first semester is a biology review and introduction to ethical issues in biotechnology, and the second semester follows the 溏心vlog免费B站 CMB190 curriculum. The visit also included discussing some of the controversial elements related to biotechnology.
Kausch and the group discussed issues around cloning such as herbicide resistant crops and their implications for use. 鈥淭hey can put a gene into plants that would make it resistant to an herbicide,鈥� Kausch said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 encouraging chemical use, but if you鈥檙e growing 400 acres of anything, how are you going to deal with weeds? You can do it manually and use a hoe, I suppose. But make that 4,000 acres and we have a problem. So, herbicides are a part of modern agriculture.鈥�
Kausch went on to explain that a lack of knowledge plays a major role in the resistance toward genetically modified crops. That resistance to new research was even stronger during the COVID pandemic, with people relying on inaccurate online sources, instead of qualified scientific ones.
鈥淭he COVID vaccine development is controversial: misconceptions cause fear. If you address a general audience, you have to tell them how vaccines are made, and if they understand this, does the fear go away?鈥� Kausch said that information distributed by pharmaceutical companies is not doing enough to educate the public. 鈥淵ou can have a glitzy presentation from Pfizer about how safe their product is, but you haven鈥檛 shown them how it works. You don鈥檛 go from a cloned piece of DNA out to something that is going to initiate an immune response that would cause you to resist a pathogen that is coming. So how does that exactly work?鈥�
The students also talked about the practical use of the knowledge, such as being able to sit around the dinner table and discuss issues in an informed manner, rather than relying on dubious online sources.
The tour also included going to the Kingston Campus and visiting the medicinal gardens, connecting the ways in which science has changed throughout the past 100 years. They sampled a leaf from a plant that temporarily numbed their mouths and learned that the plant may have been used in dental practice or other medical applications. Students talked about how medicinal plants had certain uses, whereas now substances can be mass produced, their benefits spread throughout the world.
Abbot said the students have become better global science citizens because of the 溏心vlog免费B站 course. 鈥淭he kids loved Dr. Kausch. I think they really got out of it exactly what I hoped, which was just to see real life biotech. And rather than just take these concepts that might only exist as a theoretical at school, they can see a real-life application. They can say, 鈥業f I was to go into this career, these are the options I could choose from. This is what a real lab looks like.鈥�
鈥淚 think that that’s probably my proudest moment of teaching this class, seeing students have these conversations with other people, like, 鈥楲isten, GMOs aren’t that bad,鈥� or 鈥榶ou should get vaccines, vaccines aren’t that bad.鈥� Or just have those conversations that normal 16- or 17-year-olds aren’t normally having.鈥�
鈥淲hat I鈥檓 interested in with the CMB class,鈥� Kausch told the students, 鈥渋s that people raise their literacy level so that we can all discuss these issues. I don鈥檛 know what majors you鈥檒l be in college or what your interests are, but I think everyone should be literate enough in these tools [in cellular and molecular biology] so that you鈥檙e able to discuss knowing how vaccines work, knowing how life works.鈥�
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This story was written by Hugh Markey.