Ciência Viva no Laboratório – Criar Futuro’s internships program, gives students from the 9th to the 12th grade the opportunity to gain experience in a scientific laboratory setting by developing projects alongside researchers. On the 23rd edition of the Ciência Viva no Laboratório program, NMS | FCM offers not only internships in 3 different fields but also true laboratory learning experiences such as:
Bacterial infection: from suspicion to confirmation
On the internship on Bacterial Infection: from suspicion to confirmation, it is intended that the participants can be in contact with certain methodologies used in microbiology laboratories for clinical diagnosis and scientific investigation.
The activities will go from the preparation of culture media, followed by contact with bacterial cultures in solid media to the procedures for its conservation. Bacteriological agents that cause two of the most frequent pathologies in the Portuguese population will also be morphologically and biochemically identified: bacterial tonsillitis and urinary infections.
Laboratory of virology: from drawing to practice
This internship’s main goal is to be able to put the students in contact with some procedures used in the virology laboratory for clinical diagnosis and scientific research. The participants will begin by getting to know the procedures and safety aspects in the virology laboratory, namely, the working circuits, necessary equipment and good practices.
The activities to be carried out will include the preparation of culture media, contact with cell cultures and the procedures for their conservation, as well as some techniques used to visualize the results. It will also be addressed a molecular biology strand, where extractions of DNA or RNA from samples will be performed. Afterwards, qualitative analyzes will be performed and the results will be analyzed through agarose gel electrophoresis. In the samples with positive results, the viral load will be determined by PCR in real time.
Discovering genetics using the Drosophila animal model
The students will have as a model organism, the one animal that is best known in the field of genetics: the "fruit fly". Here, hypotheses will be elaborated, going through the experimental design and, finally, analyze the results obtained. The intern’s main functions will be to accompany the researcher during the maintenance of the animals, to amplify the populations of this organism, to manipulate the animals in the magnifying glass, to select specific mutants, to carry out genetic crosses and to analyze the offspring of these same crossings.
More information here.