Making it personal at the UB and Roswell Park-hosted Genome Day – UB News Center

BUFFALO, N.Y. Four hundred 8th-graders will take a first step toward understanding personalized medicine when they attend the third annual Genome Day on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus on March 9.

The University at Buffalo and Roswell Park Cancer Institute have teamed up to engage these budding scientists and researchers as part of a series of STEM events designed to raise awareness and pique student interest in pursuing careers in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

Buses arrive at 9:30 a.m. at Roswell Park, located at the corner of Elm and Carlton streets. A pep rally kicks off the event at 9:45 a.m. in the Hohn Auditorium with brief remarks to follow by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Buffalo Public Schools (BPS) Superintendent Kriner Cash and leaders from Roswell and UBs New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences (CBLS).

Additionally, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority and Lamar Transit will recognize Desanay Nalls, a 10th grader at the Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, who is this years winning designer of the STEM poster hanging in 10 NFTA bus shelters.

Following these remarks, graduate students and postdoctoral associates will lead small groups of students in DNA extraction and other hands-on learning activities. These include karyotyping for chromosomal differences, origami to model DNA structures and identifying genetic mutations by interpreting sequences from healthy cells and tumor cells.

Genome Day is a partnership of UBs CBLS; UBs Genome, the Environment and the Microbiome (GEM) Community of Excellence; the State University of New York; and Roswell Park; with the City of Buffalo and Buffalo Public Schools.

News media are welcome to attend Genome Day and the following additional events.

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Making it personal at the UB and Roswell Park-hosted Genome Day - UB News Center