Nine Bedford School boys working on a year-long project researching snowdrop DNA have attended The Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy of Science, to present their findings at its annual Summer Science Exhibition.
The boys have been conducting pioneering research on snowdrop DNA through the Royal Society Partnership Grants Scheme, as part of a larger, sustained, collaborative project.
The innovative project saw the school partner with Rothamsted Research and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) to carry out the first-ever research using DNA barcoding to discover relationships between different species of Snowdrops.
The project aimed to uncover how different Snowdrop plant species have evolved from a common ancestor by studying DNA sequence similarities and differences.
The research took the boys to The National Trust’s Anglesey Abbey to work alongside experts to identify and gather different types of snowdrop species, at the state-of-the-art science laboratories at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
Here they worked with bioinformaticians from the internationally renowned European Bioinformatics Institute to find similarities in the DNA sequences, and to Rothamstead Research where they carried out the DNA sequencing.
Teacher of Biology at Bedford School and the boys’ mentor throughout the project, Mrs Jean Mainstone said: “Over the course of the project the boys have learned skills they would not normally develop until at least under-graduate level.
“They have demonstrated excellent communication skills and contributed to the scientific community…I could not be prouder.”
The Bedford School boys, travelled to The Royal Society at the end of last term to be part of the Young Researchers Zone, where other schools awarded with Royal Society Partnership Grants, were also presenting their projects.
During the day, members of the public came to see the exhibition and to hear the boys explain the project and their findings to young children, adults, and scientists such as Jim Al-Khalili and Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
The exhibition was followed by a black-tie event in the evening where fellows of The Royal Society and invited guests looked round the exhibition and the boys explained what they had been doing to scientists who are the top in their fields, including the Founder of Oxford
Nanopore, who invented the MinION, which they used to sequence the chloroplast DNA.
