Antioch science fair winners move on to next level

By Roni Gehlke
For the Contra Costa Times

It isn't every day that two young high school students get to use the facilities at a lab the size of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Earlier this year Deer Valley High School science students Jasmine Gajeton and Jessica Chiang needed special equipment to prove a theory and the lab officials were happy to help in the name of science.

The girls were hoping to be able to find a significant difference between a piece of fruit and a piece of corn that had been genetically enhanced by farmers. The test was part of a project the girls were working on for the Contra Costa County Science and Engineering Fair that took place at the end of March.

"The idea was to test two pieces of corn," Jasmine Gajeton, a 17-year-old senior, said. "One piece was grown without any genetic enhancement and the other was organic of genetically enhanced."

The girls spent the day at the lab using a special piece of equipment called a Real-Time PCR. Essentially the special device allowed the girls to use extremely fast cycles and temperature control systems to test the DNA of both pieces of corn and pieces of papaya.

"The equipment helped us to extract the DNA," Gajeton said. "That way we could see if the genetically modified corn was any different from the non-modified corn."

The girls actually wound up making two trips to the lab because on the first trip the test came out negative, meaning that there was no difference in the DNA. "Unfortunately, the second trip it came out negative as well," Chiang, a 17-year-old Deer Valley junior, said.

Not disappointed by the results, but determined to find the reason for there being no difference, the girls did further research and found that they might have received a different reading if they had different data.

"We explained all of the details on our display at the science fair," Chiang said.

Gajeton explained that all of the details are plotted out so that anyone can take the information and redo the test and find the specific genetic changes like the ones the girls were hoping to find.
For their efforts the girls won the top team award at the Contra Costa County Science and Engineering Fair and their chance to move up to the next competition, Intel International Science & Engineering Fair, which takes place next month in San Jose.

Their project has now been redubbed "The testing of Zea Maize and Carica Papaya L. for genetically modified genes on a Real-Time PCR." It also won a special award at the local level called the University of California International Science and Engineering Fair Grant Award.

The girls will be up against 1,400 other students from more than 40 nations to compete for scholarships, tuition grants, internships, scientific field trips and a grand prize of $50,000.

Other East County recipients of the Contra Costa County Science and Engineering awards include Grand Award winner (senior category), Alec Howard of Deer Valley High School who shared the top prize at the fair with De La Salle High School sophomore William Thornbury. Howard's project was called "One Dollar Auction" and explored behavioral science. Howard could not be reached for comment.

The four students are the only winners of the local contest who will move to the next step in the competition at the Intel ISEF, but there were other East County winners who will be able to attend the
California State Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles later next month, which the four will attend as well. They include Holy Rosary eighth-grader Jake Forrester, with his project "From Garbage to Energy," and Deer Valley junior Haider Yasamin, with her project "The Relationship Between the Distance and Size of Globular Clusters."