SCSU Offers BioTec Program

NEW HAVEN — Beginning in the Spring 2000 semester, the Department of Biology at Southern Connecticut State University will offer a new concentration in biotechnology that will train students in the techniques and methods necessary for working in this rapidly growing field.

Sarah Martinelli, SCSU professor of biology and coordinator of the new program, said, “Connecticut is attempting to be in the forefront of the biotechnology field, and we want to prepare students to enter any of the big biotechnology companies.”

Students who choose the new concentration will take the biotechnology lab course, BIO 467, as well as several other biology courses that will integrate biotechnology methods. The program will cover gene cloning; analysis of DNA structure and functioning; structure and functioning of proteins; DNA sequencing and mapping; PCR (polymerase chain reaction) analysis of DNA; analysis of computerized databases in order to compare the structure of disease and normal genes; and analysis of evolutionary relationship among genes.

Ms Martinelli, who will teach BIO 467, said that in the new program students will answer questions on a molecular level, specifically about how genes can go awry and result in disease. “Twenty-five years ago one approached genes on a descriptive basis,” Martinelli said, “but now we can look inside the structure of genes and study how genetic processes can go wrong.”

For more information about SCSU’s new biotechnology program, contact Professor Sarah Martinelli at 203/392-6215.