If he is not crouched over a microscope and computer screen, he could be found preparing blood samples and slides - a single incandescent bulb lighting his work so as not to ruin his samples with fluorescent light.

John Spinicchia, a biology and environmental science teacher at Great Mills High School in St. Mary's County, Maryland was one of 12 teachers to participate in the 2004 Chesapeake Teacher Research Fellowship, offered through the Environmental Science Education Partnership. This program immerses middle and high-school science teachers in research being conducted at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Center of Marine Biotechnology. The ultimate goal of this program is for teachers to learn to use current research to deliver stimulating lessons to students.

In Spinicchia's case, that will mean introducing his students to a state-of-the-art environmental diagnostic test and connecting their observations of DNA under classroom microscopes to real-world environmental issues in their backyards.

While a fellow at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, MD, Spinicchia worked under the guidance of Dr. Carys Mitchelmore, who works to develop novel biomarkers - early warning diagnostic tools using molecular techniques - to detect environmental problems before they cause disease, genetic defects, or death. She involved Spinicchia in the research needed to develop and optimize a test called the Comet Assay for use with blood cells from reptiles.

"This test has been used to detect DNA damage in many fish and invertebrate species, but never with reptiles," Spinicchia said enthusiastically. "Dr. Mitchelmore is planning to publish our results to show that it can be used with reptiles."

"The test reveals nonspecific genotoxic damage - single-strand breaks in the DNA," Spinicchia explains. "It is called the Comet Assay because, at the end of the process, the damaged strand of DNA leaks out of the cell membrane and looks like a comet tail. The longer the tail, the greater the damage," he says.

Once scientists have been alerted to an environmental problem by observing DNA damage, they can use specific tests to determine the causes.

Spinicchia is looking forward to using this project to teach his students about DNA and new lab technologies. "One of the hardest things is teaching students how to make scientific inferences. If I can teach them with something concrete like this, something they can visualize, they can learn to make [these] inferences," he says.

http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/Extension/msgsnn/msgsnn07_1/damaged_dna.html