Harborfields HS Students Conduct Research At Brookhaven National Lab

GREENLAWN, NY — Science Research students from Harbor Fields High School conducted research at Brookhaven National Labs using the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS-II) over two weekends in December, the school district announced.

Harbor Fields is one of only four high schools on Long Island with exclusive access to the NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Laboratory, located in Upton. The state-of-the-art machine is one of the "most advanced synchrotron light sources in the world," the district wrote.

The synchrotron works by sending electrons around in a ring inside a building large enough to encircle Yankee Stadium, nearly as fast as the speed of light. As a result, it allows researchers to study materials at a nanoscale resolution and exquisite sensitivity by providing cutting-edge capabilities. It creates some of the strongest X-rays ever created on Earth. It held the world record for the strongest X-ray in 2014, according to Harborfields.

For their research, Alex Meagher, Leo Meagher, Riley Lyons, Jackson Dunham, and Phoebe Xidas,
alongside their teacher, Michael Pinto, harnessed the high energy X-rays to focus on protein crystals so their structure could be seen at a very high resolution.

The students’ specific research led them to study cyclophilin B protein from the species Brugia malayi, which causes lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic disease obtained by microscopic worms that are transmitted by mosquito bites.

"I am so proud of the work these students are doing," said Pinto, an advanced science research
teacher at Harborfields High School. "They got excellent diffraction results and may be able to publish the structure of their protein in the Protein Data Bank later on this school year!"

The Protein Data Bank was established as the first open access digital data resource in biology and medicine, and is a global leading resource for experimental data central to scientific discovery.

If the students' work is published, it means their research and results could be used by doctors to treat lymphatic filariasis and countless other diseases in the future.