From Riverbanks to DNA Labs: Students Dive into Real-World Science

Redmaids' High School recently received a prestigious partnership grant from the Royal Society, working with the University of the West of England, to launch a project using eDNA technology to identify species living in Bristol’s rivers.

Led by our Biology teacher, Mrs Turner, the project will give a group of students the opportunity to take part in laboratory and fieldwork over the coming months. Together, they will study the biodiversity of the River Trym and investigate ways to help protect and improve local wildlife populations. This partnership is a wonderful example of how education and scientific research can come together to inspire young people and deepen their understanding of the natural world; it is fantastic that our students will be contributing to real-world conservation work while developing their scientific skills and experience.

The first day of the project took place last week. Here is a report from Mrs Turner...

Students started the workshop with a talk from Associate Professor Mark Steer (who runs the Conservation Science department at UWE). He talked them through the process of eDNA sampling and testing and its importance for conservation projects. The insightful questions from our Year 12’s led him into degree level content on the use of quantitative PCR.

Then Amy Wade (River Education and Engagement lead at BART) led the students through the issues facing our local river Trym and the Hazel Brook. Students were fascinated with the amazing life cycle of the critically endangered European Eel which breed in the Sargasso Sea before migrating all the way across the Atlantic to the rivers of Europe, and even our own little Trym! Our Year 10 students had a long discussion with one of the PhD students from UWE about the eel, and she was so impressed with their questions and enthusiasm.

Students used what they had learnt from the fascinating talks to start planning their investigation and settled on a title of "How do the weirs and culverts of the Trym and Hazel Brook affect the fish species distribution?". From this point they got into planning their method and identified several different survey points along the river which they would like to visit. It was so inspiring to see the students working together and rising to the challenge of planning their own field investigation, an impressive feat.

Having decided on their plan we set off into the field. Our first stop was Badocks wood where the PhD and Masters students from UWE demonstrated how they use the equipment to take samples of water from the river before syringing it over a specialised filter system to collect and preserve the DNA in the sample. These samples will be stored at UWE over the summer before we start the DNA extraction and analysis in September.

In the afternoon we headed off to Blaise estate, at each site the students identified the human made features they wanted to investigate, laid out tape measures to ensure systematic sampling and carefully collected and labelled their samples. Superb young scientists showing skill and dedication in their work!

Before we knew it we were out of time and headed back onto the bus to return to school.

One of the highlights for me as their teacher was to see how confidently they interacted with Mark (Associate professor), Robyn (PhD student) and Dylan (Master student) from UWE. Our students really made the most of this opportunity and worked with such engagement and enthusiasm, they can be very proud of everything they accomplished in just one day.

 It was a fantastic start to the project, and we left excited for our DNA Day in September. The next stage will see Mark and the team coming into school for the day and taking over one of our labs! Students will be taught how to use specialist equipment to extract the environmental DNA (eDNA) from the samples they collected during their fieldwork. The samples will then be incubated before being prepared for quantitative PCR analysis, where we will look for the presence of eDNA from Eel, Brown Trout and Stickleback. Amy, from BART, pointed out that this is certainly not just an ordinary school science project, as the results will be used by the Rivers Trust to support their ongoing work to improve the condition of our beautiful local rivers. We look forward to sharing more updates and results from this exciting project over the coming months. 

Mrs Turner, Biology Teacher