Outreach
We have initiated a summer research program titled 鈥淵ou Evolve a Protein! (YEP!)鈥�, that conveys the principles and technology associated with directed evolution of proteins to high school students in a visually captivating way. In this program we aim to demonstrate how principles of evolution can be used in the laboratory to engineer protein function. To make this somewhat esoteric concept more appealing and readily demonstrable to high school students, we have chosen green fluorescent protein (GFP) as our model system, with the goal of changing its color (emission wavelength).
Libraries of GFP variants are generated and individual library members are expressed in听E. coli, plated on solid media to generate fluorescent colonies. Colonies that exhibit altered color (Figure 1) are spectrally characterized in crude听E. coli听lysate, and the associated DNA is characterized by DNA sequencing to explain the molecular basis of the color change. Participants in this program are exposed to basic manipulation in molecular biology, dealing with lab strains of听E. coli, analytical characterization of fluorescent proteins, connecting genotype (DNA sequencing of evolved clones) to phenotype (change in color), and advanced instrumentation (e.g., multi-mode plate reader, fluorescence microscopy, cell sorting, etc.). Additionally, the trainees enjoy a 鈥渕icrobial art project鈥� where five different听E. coli听cultures, each expressing a fluorescent protein of distinct color, are used as 鈥減aint鈥� to make demonstrations on agar plates, which 鈥渄evelops鈥� overnight upon incubation and are visible with UV-illumination (Figure 2).
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Figure 1: Example of colonies with altered colors
Figure 2: Example of a microbial art on agar plate
YEP! 2015
YEP! 2016 team