Outreach

We have initiated a summer research program titled “You Evolve a Protein! (YEP!)”, 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 E. coli, plated on solid media to generate fluorescent colonies. Colonies that exhibit altered color (Figure 1) are spectrally characterized in crude E. coli 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 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 “microbial art project” where five different E. coli cultures, each expressing a fluorescent protein of distinct color, are used as “paint” to make demonstrations on agar plates, which “develops” overnight upon incubation and are visible with UV-illumination (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Example of colonies with altered colors

Figure 2: Example of a microbial art on agar plate

YEP! 2015

YEP! 2016 team