Rising to the occasion Port educator teaches biotechnology from a simple loaf of bread

By Katie Curley
Staff Writer

May 16, 2008 12:14 am

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Newburyport's Lesley Kennedy has been busy in her kitchen on Berry Drive.

"I tried a basic quick bread recipe in my bread machine, and I got this little dough you couldn't do anything with," Kennedy said. "Then I started playing with it to design a better dough."

Just as Kennedy, a Museum of Science teacher educator, has worked over the last weeks to design a better dough, Genzyme Corp. scientists work every day to design better cell growth, which in turn helps everyone from burn victims to those in need of knee replacements.

The parallels are the basis of Kennedy's new workshop, "Bread, Cells and Industry," which she presented to middle school science teachers last weekend at the Museum of Science in Boston.

The seminar, the first of its kind, incorporated employees of Genzyme Corp. in Cambridge and teachers from all over New England to introduce simple techniques that can be used in the classroom to accent units on life sciences.

Kennedy said bread is the easiest product to compare to cell cultures because the active ingredient, yeast, is the most basic form of living organism and therefore can be used to show the similarities in biotechnology.

Just as you must harness the yeast to make the bread rise, she said, you must also create perfect conditions for cell growth to then make cartilage cells or therapeutic skin cells.

"The bread making is inter-wrapped with the idea that scientists have to have optimal cell cultures and work to have controlled growth for these cells," she said.

At the workshop, Kennedy said, teachers focused on designing a better dough to show how cell cultures in the biotechnology industry also must have optimal conditions for growth. By analyzing the salt content in the bread ingredients as well as the acidity and quantity of air pockets produced, she was able to lead teachers in creating the perfect bread recipe.

"Yeast is a fungus, single-celled organism which reproduces asexually. It can be used to illustrate a multitude of biological concepts," she said.

To create her workshop, Kennedy worked closely with Genzyme scientists to illustrate the parallels between biotechnology and sandwich bread.

"Our corporate relations team has tried to really put more effort into increasing awareness of what biotechnology is and what Genzyme does for the community," said Michelle Eldridge, senior training manager for cell therapies at Genzyme.

The same concept of creating the perfect environment to optimize the end result is the basis of creating perfect cells for patients, Eldridge said. "There is a big correlation," she said.

"Through making bread and looking at the variations and end results, it is very similar to what we do here for replacement therapy skin and cartilage," she said.

In addition to providing real-life applications for biotechnology, Kennedy said, having Genzyme scientists interact with educators allows them to get a glimpse of the fast-growing biotechnology industry that is oftentimes left out of school curriculums.

Founded in Boston in 1981, Genzyme is one of the top biotechnology companies in the world today with 10,000 employees and more than $3 billion in revenue. The company strives to create the most advanced technologies in the life sciences, focusing on rare inherited disorders, kidney disease, orthopedics, transplant, cancer and diagnostic testing.

"The goal is really to have the teacher learn something surprising and new and go back and do some of it in the classroom," Kennedy said. "Bioengineering is looking at what we know to create processes which can influence human beings."

Kennedy, who has a son attending Newburyport High School and another son studying science in college, said a lot of middle and high schools today do not have the proper equipment to teach basic life science principles, such as DNA coding. She hopes through seminars, such as the one last weekend, teachers will feel empowered to be able to relate ideas about biotechnology and life sciences to students in a basic way.

"You can't teach biology today without biotechnology," said Kennedy, who has lived in Newburyport for more than 20 years with her husband, who is a marine biologist. "I hope to show teachers you don't have to tack on another unit in an already full curriculum, but that it can be hands-on and within the sequence with basic tools."

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