MicroscopyEducation
Discovery on Wheels: the Biobus Emily Elert
Independent science writer, former New York City science teacher, and an occasional volunteer on the Biobus.
emily.elert@gmail.com
Te night before I’m scheduled to volunteer on the Biobus,
Dr. Ben Dubin-Taler—the bus’s owner and educational director—calls to give me directions: Take the 5 train to the Bronx, get off at the second-to-last stop. Make two rights and then a leſt on Baychester Avenue. Walk to John Philip Sousa Middle School. “We’ll be parked out front,” Dubin-Taler tells me. I hesitate, imagining picking my way through a sea of frenzied children and identical school buses. “You’ll see us,” says Dubin-Taler. Te next morning, turning onto Baychester Avenue, I
discover that the Biobus is, in fact, impossible to miss. Painted in bright blues and yellows, the vehicle stands out from its gray-brown winter surroundings like a colored horse in Te Wizard of Oz. It has the bubbly, cartoonish look of the 1970s. Above the roof, a front-mounted turbine spins in the wind. When I reach the bus, the mechanical doors slide open with
a mechanical hiss, and Dubin-Taler grins down at me. “Come on in! Welcome to the Biobus!” he says (Figure 1). Onboard, Dubin-Taler rubs his hands together and smiles again. He’s wearing a stocking cap, fleece jacket, hiking boots, and looks ready for a field trip, which, I realize, is appropriate: the Biobus is essentially a portable field trip, a mobile microscopy lab that brings the fun side of cell biology to students and schools all over New York City. Today’s students are scheduled to arrive in just a few
minutes, and I watch as Dubin-Taler and his assistant, Ric, set up the lab. Dubin-Taler starts a fire in the woodstove and then turns his attention to two microscopes, which he liſts off the floor, plugs in, and attaches to a video monitor and a
camera. As he works, Dubin-Taler shows me the highlights of each microscope: We can make time-lapse videos of yeast cells moving and reproducing on the phase contrast microscope. Te other one—a fluorescence microscope—lets us peek in at the DNA and cell skeleton in a sample of neuron cells (Figure 2). Tis is research-grade equipment, stuff you wouldn’t
see in most high school lab classrooms. Tis is especially significant for the Biobus because half of the students Dubin-Taler serves attend poorly performing schools in low-income communities. Some schools have no science lab materials at all, and for those that do, large class sizes oſten limit their use to rote, “cookie-cutter” experiments. Part of the Biobus’s mission is to bring real science to students who would otherwise miss out entirely. “Tere are millions of students who have access to first rate science education,” Dubin-Taler says, “but there are millions more who do not. With the BioBus we are leveling the playing field between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots.’” In the back room of the bus, Ric sets up the computer lab,
liſting monitors onto a table and plugging in parts. As he works, Ric explains that all of the bus’s electrical needs are met with eight golf-cart batteries, which are charged by two sources: the solar panels on the roof and the wind turbine. Dubin-Taler leans over and checks a small monitor under the microscopes. “You wouldn’t expect this on a day like today, but we’re actually getting great solar right now.” Te first group of students arrives just as Dubin-Taler
picks up a vial containing sugar, water, yeast, and bacteria—the sample we are to use today. It’s frozen solid. Without missing
Figure 1: The Biobus in New York City. 38
Figure 2: Microscopes on the Biobus produce high-quality images like this fluorescence image taken on an Olympus DP12.
doi:10.1017/S1551929511000447
www.microscopy-today.com • 2011 July
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