Over the last twenty years, recombinant DNA, gene expression, and genetic engineering technologies have become vital to enhancing our understanding of pathologies, providing a fundamental basis for enhanced scientific research.

These advances have led to revolutionary treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and other serious illnesses and have also created improvements in the healthcare, biotechnology, food, pharmaceutical, and leisure industries.

Established in 2018 through a generous gift from Mary Lynn and Fred H. (Rusty) Gage (Class of 1968), the Gage Molecular Biology program exposes biology students to university-level research and hands-on experience with sophisticated equipment that develops inquiry-based lab skills. The program is run in collaboration with Adama Scienza, an independent didactic organization part of the European Molecular Biology Labs, Europe’s flagship laboratory for Life Sciences.

Through this partnership, students will clone a fragment of DNA into a vector to create a recombinant DNA plasmid. They will transform bacteria with this plasmid and analyze the result using PCR or the polymerase chain reaction. The recombinant DNA bacteria will glow green under UV light.

The aim of this collaboration is to: