Press Release

Cobb County Student Wins Georgia Bio Science Fair Award

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Posted: Monday, May 03, 2010

ATLANTA, GA (May 3, 2010) – Georgia Bio congratulates Anne Wang, a junior at  George Walton Comprehensive High School in Cobb County.  Ms. Wang was awarded the Georgia Bio Science Fair Award at the Georgia Science and Engineering Fair held in Athens, Georgia for her project entitled “  Fluorescent Dyes for Screening Ionophoric Antibiotics”.  This award, sponsored by Merial, Ltd., is presented to the project exhibiting the most potential to impact human well being through the use of modern biotechnology techniques.

Ms. Wang’s project developed a fluorescent system to rapidly screen large numbers of chemicals in search of novel ionophores with potential antibiotic activity. Ionophores cause ‘holes’ or leaks in the cell membrane.  These holes expose an intracellular fluorescent dye to the outside environment of the cell, which can result in pH-dependent shifts in fluorescence.  Using a genetically engineered stain of E. coli, Ms. Wang demonstrated that the fluorescence of an intracellular marker varied with changes in extracellular pH when chemicals were present which acted as ionophores.  
 
Ms. Wang was also a state semifinalist in the in the Southeast regional competition of the Sanofi-Aventis International BioGENEius Challenge conducted by the Biotechnology Institute in March.  She plans to study biology in college for a possible career in medicine.  Ms. Wang is a student of Ms. Tina Link, science teacher at Walton High School.

Georgia Bio represents nearly 300 pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies, universities, research institutes, government groups and other business organizations involved in the development of products that improve the health and quality of life people worldwide. For more information, visit www.gabio.org.

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