Tuesday my biology class and I went on a field trip to the Bayer CropScience Headquarters in Leverkusen. We've been studying genetics the past few weeks and got to see Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology in action. In fact, we got to do the PCR business ourselves in the labs.
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| Who's ready to talk GMOs and paternity tests?! |
Some of PCR's uses involve paternity tests, forensics and identifying certain diseases. During our lab time we were figuring out if a certain type of rapeseed oil was a mutation or not. It involved lots of very tiny, very precise pipetting as well as a healthy dose of centrifuging. All in German, of course!
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| Check out this itty bitty mortar and pestle. |
To add to the authenticity (and also keeping with safety procedure) we got to wear official-looking Bayer CropScience lab coats. During lunch we were invited to the campus cafeteria, which was a top notch lunch venue. I mean, there's a botanical garden in the middle of this excellently designed domed building that takes full advantage of every speck of natural light filtering inside. All the employees dining around us seemed happy, too. A positive work environment was definitely being projected.
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| Bayer's new spring term 2015 interns |
In the end we discovered which strain of rapeseed oil was the mutant and which one wasn't. It was actually fun trying to figure out why we'd mix certain substances with the DNA in order to get what we wanted. We even had an impromptu discussion about genetically modified organisms, even though it wasn't specifically the subject of our particular experiment. I'm glad I wrote my Facharbeit about GMOs-- I could actually follow the discussion and contribute. It's a unendingly interesting and complex subject.
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| Learning about European Article Numbers while in the WC. |
The Bayer campus itself is quite beautiful and well laid out. Seeing the Canadian geese waddling around with their fluffy little goslings made me think of the same birds doing the same things right about now back in the Willamette Valley. Bayer is almost as old as Oregon itself. Oregon earned its statehood in 1859 and Bayer was established a few years later in 1863.
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| Billboard-worthy like another lab coat-bearing Gordon I know. |
Driving around Nordrhein-Westfalen you see the iconic Bayer logo all over the place. I used to only really think of aspirin when I thought of the company, but it became especially clear after visiting the CropScience Headquarters that they do a whole lot more than aspirin. They develop pesticides, genetically modified crops and are just all around focused on crop protection. Something like 80 percent of their CropScience efforts are put towards "crop protection".
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| Finally, Bayer getting on my level (reading level that is). |
I'm not only taking my PCR analytical skills and new genetic knowledge away from this field trip, but I was even given a book the company had made about bee protection, a cause I think is very important. I believe the book was intended as a "read aloud to your child before bedtime" kind of deal, but I totally dug it. Visiting Bayer was definitely an interesting and inspiring experience.