Science News
Science Talent Search
The Science Talent Search of Victoria results for 2023 have been released. Our participating students of Sai Pranav Bollapragada (Year 10), Arun Sivaraman Rajalakshmi (Year 10) Param Dave (Year 10), Austin Voges (Year 8) and Aditya Patel (Year 7) did a great job in researching and developing their chosen science topics for the competition.
Austin received an acknowledgement for his well-drawn poster on the Da Vinci Robot and Aditya was given a distinction award for his Cyber knife poster with the judgements commenting on the originality of the topic.
Our Year 10 students Param and his partner for the competition Arun developed a well researched poster on the Da Vinci Robot and they achieved a distinction award.
Lastly, Sai entered the creative writing competition with his composition called “The Slice of Life/ Preserving Ecosystem” which discussed the role of the eDNA scientist. Sai received a Minor Bursary award which means he achieved one of the top results in the competition and he won a monetary prize which was a great effort.
An extract from his composition is outlined below:
Kyle sat at his messy desk in the state of the art eDNA laboratory located in Queensland. As he stared at the high resolution monitor that showed the results of the high throughput sequencing of the samples that were given to him, he marvelled at the speed at which DNA was being decoded, it was nearly simultaneous!
Kyle pondered on how high throughput sequencing works by separating strands of DNA into hundreds of pieces and binding them to beads (20 micrometres long) then duplicating the DNA hundreds of times and binding them to the beads again this is called PCR (Polymerase chain reaction). Kyle then turns on a machine that fills the wells with nucleotides, if the start of the DNA strand corresponds to the nucleotide, then the enzymes on the beads (Luciferase and Sulfurylase) react with the byproduct of the reaction which caused the nucleotide to bind to the corresponding nucleotide on the DNA producing a tiny amount of light. The many copies of DNA on the bead which go through the same process also emit light, creating a flash which is detected by the sensitive cameras installed, recording it. (Adenine and Thymine bind to each other, Guanine and Cytosine bind to each other, Thymine is inserted into the wells and there is a flash in one well, the first letter in that strand of DNA is Adenine), This process is done really quickly with millions of wells analysing millions of strands of DNA giving out the data for millions of samples.
His heart swelled with awe and determination to protect the natural ecosystem of the Australian outback and exterminate any invasive species and with this technology in his hands, he was confident in his chances of success.
All staff at Glen Eira College congratulate all these students on their initiative to enter the Victorian Science Talent Search 2023 and on the great results they achieved.
Elizabeth Allan
Head of Science