Fwd: FW: SEP e-mail list: Opportunity for students to contribute to Hutch research project on fish schooling behavior

[Ryan Gunhold]

Opportunity for students to contribute to Hutch research project on fish
schooling behavior

Responses needed by July 6.



Hutch scientists Katie Peichel and Anna Greenwood are proposing a new
research study for funding from the National Science Foundation. They are
looking for teacher/student collaborators to contribute to the work.



Interested? Here's some additional background and details:

Questions should go to Katie Peichel < <mailto:cpei...@fhcrc.org>
cpei...@fhcrc.org

>



"The proposed study involves dissecting the genetic and neural basis of
schooling behavior in stickleback fish. We have designed a relatively simple
assay (bike wheel with model stickleback school) that allows us to
distinguish differences between stickleback populations in both the
motivation to school (does the fish join the school?) and ability to school
(can the fish actually school?). Using this assay, we plan to use genetic
approaches to identify the genes that underlie both motivation and ability
to school. To do this, we need to measure about 1500 fish in the schooling
assay, and each fish will be tested 3-6 times in the assay. Thus, we will
have 4,500-9,000 videos to measure! Each video is only 5 minutes, but this
still adds up to about 375-750 hours of fish videos! This work will be
spread over 2 years.

It would be great to work with a high school biology class to analyze these
videos. I envision a plan where we could bring the students to the Hutch to
both see the assay and the fish, and to learn more about our research. Anna
and I could then regularly visit the classroom to provide training and
feedback for the students in scoring the videos. In a school year, the
students would be able to follow the project through from scoring the videos
to the actual genetic mapping analysis.

It will be a big commitment - if each student agreed to measure 100 fish,
that is about 50 hours of analysis spread over a year. If we provided the
videos, they could do it on their own time. However, we still need to figure
out logistics of getting them the videos and getting the data back.

The grant is due July 12. It would be great to have a letter of support from
a teacher who is willing to commit to engaging in this project, or from you,
stating that we will work through SEP to identify an appropriate
teacher/classroom."



-------

Some of you have had the chance to hear Katie talk about her research in SEP
events.



You can learn more about Katie and her lab's work with stickleback fish
here:

http://www.fhcrc.org/research/profiles/peichel.html



Watch a short video where Katie describes the research in her lab:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HutchinsonCenter1#p/a/f/2/KnzDTd25IMc





Nancy



Nancy Hutchison, PhD

Director, Science Education Partnership

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

1100 Fairview Ave N; A1-023

Seattle, WA 98109-1024



206.667.4486

nhut...@fhcrc.org



http://www.fhcrc.org/education/sep

http://libguides.fhcrc.org/SEP

--
Ryan Gunhold, MA, STE     206.930.4410
ryan.g...@gmail.com   http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryangunhold