The “Mystery of the Crooked Cell” examines hemoglobin to test for sickle cell anemia.
The “Case of the Crown Jewels” solves a crime with DNA fingerprinting.
Micropipets and spectrophotometers, electrophoresis and column chromatography: nothing too unusual for a biotechnology laboratory at Boston University.
BU’s MobileLab, however, where these mysteries are solved, is no ordinary lab. It is a 40-foot bus, complete with a freezer, generators, deionized water faucets and lab stations for 24 people, driven throughout New England to provide students with an experience in biotechnology education.
The MobileLab was founded in 1998, through the work of Carl Franzblau and Don DeRosa. Franzblau, a professor and chairman of the department of Biochemistry and the assistant dean of Graduate Medical Sciences, got the idea from a hematology conference he attended in Miami.
“There was a convention hall with two big mobile units,” Franzblau said. “It occurred to me, why can’t we build a laboratory?”
Franzblau currently oversees both the MobileLab and CityLab, which was founded in 1992. CityLab requires students to travel to BU’s Medical School for an all-day field trip with the materials to complete biotechnology experiments.
But CityLab could not accommodate all the interested schools, and did not always match with school schedules. This is where MobileLab comes in.
“If the patient can’t come to you,” Franzblau said, “you make a house visit.”
Every year MobileLab visits 30 to 40 schools, some as far as New Hampshire, reaching about 5,000 students, according to DeRosa, a School of Education professor and director of both CityLab and MobileLab.
“We start scheduling the first week of May,” he said. “Within two days we’re booked for the year. That’s it.”
DeRosa, who has worked with MobileLab since it began, said his job was to implement Franzblau’s vision.
“I helped plan it, develop it, drove it, taught on it, cleaned it, changed the oil,” he said. “I’m rarely on it now. That’s what happens when you get old.”
MobileLab experiments range from learning about genetically engineering cells to visualizing a portion of each student’s DNA. Franzblau recalled an imaginative experiment he taught with DeRosa, during MobileLab’s infancy, for second and fourth grade students. A stuffed animal was stolen from the school library, but the criminal left materials on the library counter. Students worked in groups to design and solve the experiment and convicted one of the three suspects, all teachers, at the end of two days.
Today, MobileLab is geared toward students from grades six through 12, and the experiments usually take around three hours over a two or four day period.
Since BU began the program in 1998, other mobile biotech labs have sprung up throughout the United States in places such as North Carolina, Maryland and Texas. DeRosa described it as an “effective way to support science education outreach programs in all kinds of communities.”
BU even plans to hold a conference in June, with members from the MobileLab coalition, to discuss the establishment, implementation and evaluation of MobileLab programs throughout the nation.
“It is able to integrate cutting-edge science at the university at the six through 12 level. It’s a nice collaboration,” DeRosa said.
And a necessary one too.
The advances made in biotechnology, many within the past 20 years, “impact all of our lives,” said Deidre Clancy, head of the science department at Mount St. Joseph Academy in Brighton. After reading an article about MobileLab in the Boston Globe, Clancy scheduled a visit at her school. All of the ninth and 10th grade biology students, along with the 12th grade physiology students, visited the MobileLab in the hopes that they will be able to keep up with the constantly changing field.
“The MobileLab enhanced our curriculum and allowed students to perform labs that they would not have had. It also gave students an opportunity to work in a more professional lab setting,” she said. “It really makes them feel like they are members of CSI.”
The average high school science lab doesn’t give students the hands-on experience that MobileLab does.
It gives students the “opportunity to demystify science,” DeRosa said. “The idea of molecular biology is it’s just rocket science. It’s just for people that are in college or doctors.”
“MobileLab increases their degree of confidence,” Franzblau said. “The lab is not something that you have to be frightened of.”
MobileLab educator Berkley Wilson said her goal when she teaches students aboard MobileLab is to empower and to let students know that they can be good at science.
“Science is tricky,” she said. “You don’t always get results. And that’s just the nature of the experiments. People get discouraged. You need to hear that you can do it.”
DeRosa has a similar goal for the students MobileLab reaches.
“I want them to leave the lab saying ‘You know what? I did something that, when I walked onto the MobileLab, was a bit foreign to me,'” he said, “‘I was able to do this and I understood it. And I’m pretty good at this.'”
Wilson said she decided after graduating that she wanted to teach molecular biology, to “expose students to things they normally wouldn’t get a chance to see.”
The MobileLab bus, branded with both the violent yellow CityLab logo and, in bold red letters, Boston University School of Medicine, is hard to miss, even a bit “gimmicky,” Franzblau said.
The inside of the bus, a complete, self-contained laboratory with all sorts of materials, is usually even more exciting for students.
“Ninety-nine percent of the kids are like ‘Wow!’ and ‘Oh I wonder what that does!'” Wilson said.
“The excitement of the equipment will last for about two minutes,” DeRosa said. “And then we have to have something to deliver.”
Because the MobileLab stresses inquiry-based education, students are allowed to discover “why everything works the way it does” through actually doing the experiment, with educators on hand to both answer and ask questions, Wilson said.
Each student is able to perform the experiment individually, sharing equipment with only one other student.
For Wilson, this individual attention is a pretty powerful thing.
“My biology teacher in high school was great about getting grants, but we still worked in groups of six,” she said.
MobileLab is able to offer these materials through funds by numerous private companies.
According to Franzblau, BU gives about $400,000 each year to fund both CityLab and MobileLab. Initial funding was given through a match donation by the Hayden Foundation, part of which was matched by BU, who has helped fund the MobileLab ever since.
BU’s funding is “indicative of their really sincere desire to contribute to the community in the most powerful way — supporting teachers and students,” DeRosa said. “They’ve made a real commitment to this MobileLab and I think they should be commended for it.”
The impact of MobileLab in the community, according to Wilson, is undeniable.
“I have taught every single seventh grader in Hopkinton Middle School,” she said.
And whether it be determining who has sickle cell anemia, or discovering who stole the crown jewels, DeRosa said learning science, biotechnology or not, is integral to a good education.
“I want students to leave my courses saying ‘I know what to do when I don’t have an answer,'” he said. “And we can apply that not just to science, but across the board.”