Journey to Antartica!
Texas
My name is Jarah A. Meador and I am a graduate student working under David L. Mitchell, Ph.D. at the UT MD Anderson Center for Research on Environmental 
Disease at Smithville Texas. My project involved collecting bacteria and phytoplankton from water and ice samples in Antarctica in order to measure DNA damage caused by ultraviolet (UV) light. The two kinds of radiation that are most harmful are called UVA and UVB. I thought that it was important to study this damage because all living organisms have DNA and can be injured by UVA or UVB. We were also interested in how these organisms repaired themselves after being damaged.
The reason that we chose Antarctica for our samples is because of depletion of the
ozone layer over the Antarctic. The ozone layer allows UVA to pass through it while stopping most of the UVB from reaching the earth's surface. Since there is a thinning in the ozone layer over the Antarctic, more UVB reaches the earth's surface there than anywhere else in the world.