Making sense of Nature

April, 2012

What do the American black bear, the bullfrog and the Californian sea slug all have in common?

Answer: They were all the subjects of poster presentations by pre-med biology students at WCMC-Q.

The poster presentation was organized so that the 42 students could apply the knowledge they have been learning over the past year to real organisms.

Dr. Phyllis Griffard, senior lecturer in biology, said the students had to use certain guidelines to choose an organism during their very first week of pre-med. They have then spent their time applying the theory of what they have been taught to their chosen subject. This then came together in the poster session.

Dr. Griffard said: “It’s been a process that has involved the library and workshops and in a lot of cases the students were regretting picking what they were thinking of as a boring organism but it eventually hit them that it was actually a rather cool organism.

“I think their posters were fantastic. The students were able to take basic guidelines, their own research and the aspects they found interesting and connect them to what they learned in the classroom and a real, living organism somewhere in the world.”

Amina Bougaila’s choice of organism was Piriformospora indica – a fungus that is beneficial to agriculture as it helps crops to increase their absorption of nutrients.

She said: I chose it as it’s a newly found fungus. It was only discovered ten years ago. I had a lot of research papers to look through but it was really fun learning about it. It was hard knowing what to include and what to leave out of the poster but I chose the things about P. indica that were the most interesting.”