OLS Canmore

To increase a feeling of unity and to create connections between communities in Alberta, our team decided to collaborate with the OLS Canmore high school team.

After first reaching out to their team, we arranged a Skype conference to discuss areas that we could potentially collaborate in. We eventually decided that our team could help out with Canmore’s lab work on their construct to test out a part they have had troubles with. More specifically, we will be helping to confirm that the cells contain the correct part by performing some gene sequencing. Our team will also be searching for enzyme production.

While our team does this, Canmore agreed to send out the survey that we mentioned before, in order to gain a wider range of responses from it. They will also be looking into the ethical and moral side of bacteria entering the body for us.

As a way to work together on our projects, we decided to create a Google doc between the two teams where we give each other feedback and ask questions about the two projects. Learning from this advice and critique, and applying it will allow both teams to further their projects in a better way. For example, Canmore’s team asked for more specific details on how our team plans to administer the snake venom in our project. This question made us realize that when explaining our project, we need to specifically address the exact way that the venom will be applied in our construct in order for people outside of our team to understand. Their team also wondered whether snake venom had been used previously in a clinical setting for blood coagulation. Their curiosity for this led our team to research more into this matter. Ultimately, we found out that a team of researchers at Rice University in the US have created a new hydrogel infused with snake venom that is used for blood coagulation, but still has to go through years of testing before it will be approved to be used on humans(http://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-hydrogel-made-from-snake-venom-stops-bleeding-in-seconds). Finding out about the different ways snake venom has been applied to prevent excessive bleeding allowed our imaginations to run wild with possibilities that our project could take.

As we had hoped, collaborating has allowed a new connection to form between our two teams and has helped our team out immensely.

Lethbridge Collegiate Team

The Lethbridge Collegiate team assisted our team with tips and advice on lab work. For this, we repaid them with some help with the coding of their wiki.