BEST

BioEyes Program

BEST - BioEYES Incursion

 

During the third week of term the Year 9 & 10 ‘DNA to Dinosaurs’ class were involved in the BioEYES program which is run by the Monash University Biomedicine Institute.  This incursion involved students studying embryonic development and testing a hypothesis for inheritance in Zebrafish.  These fish are an organism that is widely used in scientific research due to their quick development and clearly identifiable features. 

The BioEYES team guided our students to select fish to breed on the first day of the program. The eggs were then collected on the second day and students took daily observations under the microscope allowing them to watch their embryos develop through the week.  At the start of the week we were able to observe the early stages of development that contained unspecialised stem cells and by the end of the week we were able to watch free swimming larvae and see structures such as a beating heart.  Students were also able to observe the pigmentation (stripes) develop on their fish and draw a conclusion for their inheritance investigation. The photos were taken of our fish during the week and show the different stages of development observed. 

It was a great opportunity to work with Zebrafish and start our study of inheritance this term.