Research possibly in jeopardy after Brooks Hall renovation

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Code violations that forced university officials to rush to open Brooks Hall for the start of fall were not the only issues following summer construction.

Two freezers containing 7,000 to 8,000 samples of DNA from two student research projects were turned off.

Bradley Swanson, associate professor of biology, returned from the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists on June 24-28 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to discover the freezers in Brooks Hall Room 152, the Applied Technology in Conservation Lab.

“We don’t know how long they were turned off for because faculty was told not to go in,” Swanson said.

The freezers were supposed to stay on the entire time, he said.

Swanson was disappointed when he found them turned off, but did not have much time to think about it because he was preparing for a forensic science camp for high school students.

Steve Lawrence, associate vice president of Facilities Management, confirmed the freezers were turned off.

“I’m aware of the power getting turned off to a freezer this summer; however, I don’t have knowledge of the extent of the impact on (research) project(s),” Lawrence said in an e-mail to Central Michigan Life.

A little too warm

One graduate and undergraduate student’s research was affected, Swanson said.

The freezers were originally set at minus-20 degrees Celsius, or minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit, and found at 26 degrees Celsius, or 78.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and left open the possibility for degraded DNA.

“DNA is stored at low temperatures because it can be degraded if exposed to high temperatures,” Swanson said. “The bonds that link individual pieces of DNA (nucleotides) together can break. This results in a single piece of DNA fracturing into several smaller pieces of DNA, which may not be usable for our needs.”

Swanson did not know how the research was affected and tests would need to be done to find out if any damage was done.

“I need to stress that we don’t know yet if any research projects were affected yet,” Swanson said. “What we need to do now is test the samples that were in the freezer and see if they are degraded or not.”

CMU and the insurance company are expected to begin sample testing this week and span over several months.

U.S. Sheet Metal in Saginaw, one of the contractors working in the hall over the summer, denied knowledge of the freezers while on the job.

Block Electric Co. of Weidman declined comment, while Mid-State Plumbing & Heating, Inc. of Mount Pleasant and Serenus Johnson Construction of Bay City could not be reached. All three also worked on Brooks Hall.