Dylan is very involved in community theater. He also is a member of the Science Club and the Technology Club and plays lacrosse. He would love to pursue a career as a lawyer. "I really like investigating things and coming to logical conclusions about them," says Dylan.
Dylan's older sister is his mentor. "She has always encouraged everything I do."
Dylan was interested in fetal alcohol syndrome and the effect that alcohol has on a growing fetus. His father helped him develop a model system using H9-C2 cells (rat heart cells) to explore this area of science at a cellular level. Dylan hypothesized that alcohol would slow cells' growth rates at low concentrations and kill cells at high concentrations.
Dylan plated healthy cells onto cluster plates and incubated them. He added different concentrations of ethanol to the cells and counted the cells on each plate after 24 and 48 hours. Dylan found that ethanol concentrations of 5 percent or higher routinely killed all the cells and that concentrations of 1 percent to 3 percent slowed cellular growth. He also found that cells in ethanol concentrations similar to what a pregnant woman may have in her blood when she is drinking grew faster than cells without ethanol. Dylan could only surmise that the disturbed timing of growth may cause the many conditions of fetal alcohol syndrome.
