Talented students and motivated teachers: an interactive and synergistic tandem to design innovative hands-on learning practices in biosciences : CusMiBio and the City DNA Barcode Project in Italy

CusMiBio, Centre of the University and School of Milan for Bioscience education is a project launched in 2004 by the University of Milan and Lombardy educational office to improve science education in high schools. Together with activities directed to all students from all types of high schools, CusMiBio has developed actions dedicated to the most gifted students. The City Barcode Project (CBP), is an “authentic” research project that engages talented students and their teachers in original research to study biological diversity in their urban environment. In the CusMiBio project, modelled on infrastructure and programmes developed at the DNA Learning Centre (DNALC) of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, teams of students and teachers were invited to analyse the diversity of other living things and products in their parks, rivers, homes, restaurants, and stores using DNA barcoding, a new approach now applied to the discovery, cataloging and monitoring of biodiversity and to the objective identification of animal and plant species. Each group engaged in the CBP underwent all the experimental steps, i) field activities (samples collection), ii) experimental activities (DNA extraction, PCR and sequencing, in CusMiBio labs), iii) bioinformatics analyses (in CusMiBio bioinformatics labs with the support of CusMiBio staff for the access to the barcode database through a simplified bioinformatic platform) and iv) preparation of a short report and a poster, to be presented at the annual Researchers' Night event in Milan. Science education is traditionally accomplished in the context of “canned” labs with known outcomes. The CBP is an open-ended research project to engage the most motivated and talented students in all aspects of scientific inquiry and in the “process” of science.