Science students from Jefferson High School and the Boulder Elementary seventh and eighth spent the week of March 27 to 30 trying to find bacteriophages from soil and water samples they collected from the local environment.
What are bacteriophages? Called phages for short, bacteriophages are viruses that kill bacteria. Why are local students searching for phages? These viruses hold promise for treating antibiotic resistant bacteria known as “superbugs.” More and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics each year and phages may be one of the alternative treatments that can help.
JHS students started searching for phages in 2015 when JHS science teacher Steve McCauley joined a program offered by the Clark Fork Watershed Education Program (CFWEP) called Bringing Research into the Classroom (BRIC). CFWEP, based at Montana Tech, partnered with biology Professor Marisa Pedulla to bring phage research into teacher classrooms. The BRIC program included a summer training academy for the teachers and a yearly visit to their classrooms to do phage hunting with Dr. Pedulla and CFWEP staff. While phages are not easy to find, former JHS students Ethan Zuefelt and Sky Wagoner each found a phage in 2015. Student discoverers get to name their phage and are identified as the discoverer in a phages database (phagesdb.org).
With the successes of the BRIC program, CFWEP offered a second program in 2019 called Phage Digging Helping Acquire Genuine Experiences in Science (PHAGES) which involved BRIC teachers mentoring another teacher in the phage research process. Mr. McCauley partnered with his wife Connie, who teaches science at Boulder Elementary School. Now Mrs. McCauley’s seventh and eighth grade classes get to do phage hunting and have been searching for phages since 2019.
The PHAGES program was designed to train and equip the mentor/mentee teacher groups so they could lead their students independently in phage hunting for the 2022-2023 school year and beyond. March 27-30 saw the McCauleys spending two days in the high school and two days in the elementary leading the students in phage discovery.
An added caveat to any student who has participated in phage discovery with a BRIC or PHAGES teacher are opportunities to continue working on phage science during the summer in high school or while attending college. Former JHS students Kylie Marks and Abram Williams, along with current JHS students Mason Lucas and Skylar Smith, have all participated in the extended programs offered by CFWEP through the Phages Program.
Another current JHS student, Quinne Shultz, has searched for phages by designing her own experiments. Last year Shultz tested 30 water samples from the Boulder area. This year she helped Mr. McCauley prep materials for the phage hunting, helped teach the phage hunting at both the high school and elementary, and will also run another phage hunting experiment before the year concludes.
The ultimate goal of the PHAGES program is to continue providing phage research to the students at JHS and Boulder Elementary School with the possibility of reaching out to other elementary schools in the county. Perhaps the next phase of the program would see high school students passing on their knowledge of phage hunting to the elementaries under the guidance of Mr. and Mrs. McCauley, as Shultz did this year.
Grants have funded the phage programs thus far and may be important to the longevity of the program. The McCauleys will receive further training this summer on phage hunting, but will also receive training on grant writing.
For more information on phage hunting, go to www.cfwep.org.
