Hormel Institute brings health sciences to life for sixth

AUSTIN — Smashing frozen lettuce leaves on the ground isn't an everyday task for Todd Schuster, core manager of the Instrument Core Facility at The Hormel Institute in Austin, Minnesota. But when the day's agenda involves submerging balloons, lettuce and flowers into liquid nitrogen, he'll happily do it for the kids.

"It's just kind of fun to watch for a few minutes, kids all being very interested in science," Schuster said.

More than 100 sixth-grade students enrolled in the Medical Detectives class at Austin's IJ Holton Intermediate School spent Monday afternoon at the institute. The groups rotated between four learning stations — bacteria, protozoa, clinical trials and brain tumors — before gathering in the auditorium for the liquid nitrogen demonstration.

"A plant will have a lot of water in it," said Schuster, holding up an iceberg lettuce leaf. "We look at this lettuce leaf, we see how very floppy it is. So, now I want to expose this to liquid nitrogen. What do you think is gonna happen to the leaf?"

Hands popped up around the auditorium, with some students guessing it would freeze or that it would get stiff. Using protective gloves and tongs, Schuster plunges the leaf into the liquid nitrogen container for several seconds. He then took the frozen leaf out and let it fall to the floor, where it shattered like glass. The room erupted with whoops and screams.

That was sixth-grader Olin Burke's favorite part of the day, he said. He also reflected on a presentation about protozoa.

"We got to learn about how the first microscope was made and stuff like that," Burke said.

During the brain tumor presentation, associate professor Gasper Kitange and postdoctoral fellow Hamid Bakshi used a life-size brain model to point out each region of the brain and what it controls.

When they got to the cerebellum, Kitange explained how conditions that impact that part of the brain can make it hard for a person to walk, keep their balance and do repetitive movements. He demonstrated this by asking the students point at themselves with one hand and use their opposite hand to alternate between touching their nose and touching the pointed finger.

"If the cerebellum isn't working, you cannot do that," Kitange said.

Students then took turns reassembling the brain model and viewing brain cells on a microscope. Those observations directly relate to what Kitange and Bakshi work on at the institute — Kitange explained that his lab takes cultures from brain tumors and studies them to try and figure out what causes brain tumors to form.

That connection to science and scientific research is what drove this visit. While Schuster said the institute doesn't usually use its liquid nitrogen to freeze flowers and leaves, it does have a purpose.

"We do freeze cells and some tissue for storage," he said. "We also use it to cool our Cryo-EM microscope."

At the end of the day, the goal is to get students interested in science.

"It just gets them interested, and you hope that other kids look into science more and try to figure out what they can do, what parts of the science field interest them," Schuster said.