BC3 student picked for research program
A Butler County Community College student is one of 10 students nationwide selected to take part in a National Science Foundation-funded residential research program.
As a result, Hope Miller, 19, of Butler, will spend the better part of the summer dissecting fruit flies in a lab at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.
Miller has experience in taking things apart. In fact, she attributes her work in a freshman biology class to helping her win a place in the foundation program.
Congress created the National Science Foundation in 1950 as an independent federal agency to, among other objectives, promote the progress of science.
The National Science Foundation states that it funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by colleges and universities in the United States.
Miller, who graduated from Butler High School in 2020, took Principles of Biology I with John Ripper.
Eight students in Ripper's course last fall completed novel DNA sequencing over a month for three varieties of the morning glory plant.“We were looking at the DNA makeup of the individual little parts,” Miller said. “It's kind of like building a puzzle.“It's using a sample part of a leaf, using chemical reactions to separate the DNA from everything else,” she said.The samples were sent to different labs and, when the results came back, Miller said, “We found three novel sequences that have never been seen in these plants.“GenBank confirmed they were novel sequences,” Miller said.GenBank is a database sponsored by the National Center for Biotechnology Information and is part of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. On Feb. 2, GenBank published the BC3 students' findings.“This data is collected across the world, so we can determine how things have evolved and how things are related,” Miller said. “It's a big deal, because these are new sequences that no one has published before. And it is especially impressive because we were freshmen who did it.”“One of the good things about BC3 is the small class size and access to resources that students at larger institutions don't necessarily have,” Ripper said. “I think it is unique that our freshman students are participating in DNA sequencing work that is novel. (Miller) clearly stood out from a very competitive field. The strength of her candidacy lies in her incredible potential and work ethic.”
Her work on the gene sequencing project and having her name on the published findings helped her land the National Science Foundation position.“This definitely set me aside from some of the other applicants,” she said.She arrived at James Madison on May 25.Miller, two other students and the professor are studying fruit flies and mice, trying to find a mutation that also occurs in humans.“We are trying to see how this mutation causes lysosomal storage disease,” she said.Lysosomal storage disease, she said, causes severe mental retardation, neurological problems and muscular degeneration.“I am harvesting flies, taking their gut tubes, and we are putting them on slides to see if there are changes,” Miller said.“It took me a week to do this really well. It's definitely difficult, but rewarding,” she said.“In a lot of cases, when you are doing research on other organisms, it's to figure out how it works in humans,” Miller said.She will continue the research program until the end of July.Miller said she will come back to BC3 in the fall.She intends to graduate from BC3's biological science program in May 2022 and transfer to Clarion University of Pennsylvania to pursue a bachelor's degree in biology with a pre-med track.“The research is just a unique experience, and it will help set myself apart from other people applying to medical school,” Miller said.“I made the decision between my sophomore and junior year in high school that I wanted to go into a medical field, pharmacist, nurse or doctor, something like that,” she said.“I want to be a doctor who works with patients in a practice.”
