Project Lead the Way’s Biomedical Science program at the Carroll County Career and Technology Center provides students with the opportunity to further their study in biology and explore careers in biological sciences, biotechnology, and medical research. 

It is one of only a handful of programs in the nation to implement an optional cloning project where the students sequence a gene from a plant and perform bioinformatic analysis.       

The project involves isolating the glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase gene from a plant species of the student’s choosing and cloning into an E. coli plasmid so that the genetic sequence can be determined. Once the sequencing of the gene is complete, the students perform a full bioinformatics analysis to determine the presence of the coding regions and location of single nucleotide polymorphisms within the gene for use as a model for the diagnosis and treatment of various genetic diseases.  

As a result of their work on this project, ten students and their teacher have been published within the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s bioinformatics research database. This database is a repository for all publicly available nucleotide and protein sequences and is one of the most widely used bioinformatics programs in the world. As part of the National Institutes for Health, scientists from around the world use this database for their research as it is perhaps the most influential database for research in biology. 

The students and their teacher are listed below: 

• Nazira Alli, North Carroll HS
• Juliana Compton, Francis Scott Key HS
• Jordan Denny, South Carroll HS
• Grace Fansler, South Carroll HS
• Brendan Gallagher (teacher) Career Tech Center
• Emily Garland, Manchester Valley HS
• Victoria Graham, Manchester Valley HS
• Elisabeth Lang, Century HS
• Brandan Redhi, Francis Scott Key HS
• Nadia Rinker, Francis Scott Key HS
• Kyle Wende, North Carroll HS