On June 18, 1997, the following article appeared in The Herald-Leader Newspaper in Fitzgerald, Georgia. The story was written by Sherri Butler, Staff Writer for the Herald-Leader. Photographs are by Staff Photographer, Ruby Hodgman. The photos were scanned from the original newspaper article by Carol Stiff with apologies to the photographer if they are not quite as good as the originals. Permission to publish this on the WWW was granted by the author, Sherri Butler.

BY SHERRI BUTLER

The Herald-Leader Newspaper, Fitzgerald, Georgia

Marty Kalin of Plant Cell Technology, Inc. described participants from a recent test of his company's products as being "from over 50 universities, government research laboratories, commercial tissue culture and micro propagation laboratories worldwide, and one sixth grader from Ben Hill County Middle School."

That sixth grader is Eric Cumbee, son of Joe and Laura Cumbee. He is the grandson of Oma Cumbee of Ocilla and Jack and Nancy Lemasters of Lake Park.

When Eric started planning his science fair project for the school year just past, he turned to the Internet for help. It was the beginning of an experience that brought him information and support, even supplies, from scientists all over the world.

Like his dad, Eric is interested in carnivorous plants. Propagation of these plants in artificial media (a substance that contains all the nutrients the plant tissue will need to grow), or tissue culture, seemed like a promising place to start. Eric's father bought him a beginner's tissue culture set, with media that included appropriate nutrients, containers for the media and tissue, etc., and Eric went to work, trying to propagate hooded pitcher plants.

He and his father created a rough and ready "in vitro" (glass) chamber out of an old aquarium. Closed on three sides and at top and bottom, the tank is screened on the fourth side by a curtain of bubble wrap. Two slits in the wrap allow Eric to reach inside to work. In this chamber, he could do his experiments using the sterilization techniques he had learned. He boiled his flasks and other glass equipment to sterilize it. Using an alcohol lamp inside the chamber, he flamed his forceps to heat sterilize them before using them to handle plant material.
 

But again and again, his cultures were contaminated. "They molded almost immediately, after just two days," Eric says. He couldn't complete his experiment because he couldn't get uncontaminated cultures.

Meanwhile, he had begun searching the Internet for information about tissue culture. He downloaded material from the electronic Encyclopedia Britannica and, thanks to his dad, he also discovered the PLANT-TC listserv.

A listserv is something like a round-robin letter, computer style. Members send messages to a central address and this server sends each message out to all members, either as individual messages or in digest form. with all the messages grouped together.

The PLANT-TC listserv is devoted to tissue culture. Its members include research scientists, professionals who work in tissue culture and hobbyists. As with most listserves, no one but the server knows how many members there are, because not all members post messages regularly. Eric says he received around 10 messages a day from the list. He also joined the Carnivorous Plant List.

Eric began working on his science fair project in December. Soon the members of the listserv became interested in what he was doing. His equipment was inadequate - but not for long. Packages from all over the world began arriving, some containing media, vials for experiments and other items. Eric received seed from seed banks all over the world, from France, Britain and Australia as well as the U.S.

He was still plagued by contamination problems. Then he saw a message posted by Marty Kalin of Plant Cell Technology, Inc. to the TC List. His firm had a new product to test, called PPM (plant preservative material), which they hoped would prevent growth of mold and other contaminants in tissue culture media. They needed laboratories to test the product.

Eric was excited about this post, his dad recalls, and wanted to call Kalin immediately. After some discussion, Joe wrote to Kalin about his son's interest. Kalin's major concern, Eric says, was for safety. 'My dad had to supervise me because in concentrated form, PPM is strong, like acid." Rigid safety precautions had to be taken. The compound is so strong that Eric only used it in a ' mixture 'of one ml (milliliter), PPM to 1,000 ml of water. He got a syringe from the school nurse at BHMS so he could measure accurately.

With a new focus, Eric got back to work. In one experiment, he used groups of flasks of carnivorous plant media, some containing PPM and some not. The first group of flasks was exposed to household air until they showed signs of contamination. A second group was exposed for 24 hours, then recapped. Three other groups were exposed for shorter periods of time and one group, used as a control, was never exposed. These experiments were important tests, Eric says, because "'media catch contamination from the air."

In other experiments, Eric went back to the in-vitro chamber. He placed seeds and tissue from carnivorous plants into media containing PPM. He changed his sterilization techniques slightly, spraying the chamber with a disinfectant before proceeding. He sterilized his instruments in a bleach solution, safer than using the open flame.

Eric says he "did a lot more work" on this project than any previous one he had done. "There was so much criteria that had to be met."

The results? Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can check them out for himself. Eric's results have been posted on the web by MK Technologies. The URL is: http://www.mktechnology.com/cumbee.htm.

For those without Internet access, suffice it to say that PPM definitely did away with Eric's mold problems.

Eric's completed science fair project won him first place in the sixth grade competition, and at district he received a blue ribbon with a score of 98 out of a possible 100.

He frets about those two points that kept' him from the state science fair, and in e-mail messages to his Internet friends, he told them he felt he had let them down. They were quick to reassure him with congratulatory messages and encouragement for next year.

Many of these scientists have also invited Eric to tour their laboratories or offered their assistance In arranging tours of other labs for him. Eric says, "I'm grateful that they were helping me. I'm amazed."

He's also gratified that his experiment findings compared with those of the university and commercial labs. "My results were the same as everybody else's, the universities' were just on a larger scale."

One scientist, Carol Stiff of Washington State University, has encouraged him to stay in touch with her, noting that she has served as a long time mentor for a young scientist before. She challenged him with the question: What is he going to do for next year's science fair?

Well, he' s thinking about it. He will probably continue his project from last year, extending it to study the effect of different amounts of hormones on tissue cultured plants.

He is also interested in working with another species of carnivorous plant, Nepenthes which are native to such areas as Borneo, Malaysia and Australia. These plants are tropical pitcher plants, bearing "pitchers" at the tips of their leaves. The pitchers may be as "small as the end of your finger or as large as a drink bottle," Eric says.

He is working with several varieties of Nepenthes and hopes to get healthy carnivorous plants from the tissue culture of seeds. It's easier to do tissue culture from seeds than from plant pieces, Eric says. The seeds may take only a few days. But he's concerned about the nepenthes seeds that he cultured about two months ago. They still have not germinated, and he doesn't know if it just takes the seeds this long or if something is not right.

For now, the successfully cultured plants from his recent project live inside capped glass vials. When their roots have developed - in about a year, Eric hopes - he will plant them into soil. If they have not developed enough roots in that time, he will transplant them into larger bottles and wait for them to develop more.

And the Cumbee family is making plans for their summer vacation, plans that may include visits to some of the university and commercial laboratories Eric has been invited to tour.

Looking ahead, Eric thinks he might like a job in tissue culture when he gets older. Then again, he's pretty interested in NASA's space shuttle program too.