MONICA DEAN has long dreamed of becoming a scientist, so making synthetic DNA in the lab of a major biotechnology company has her on Cloud Nine. A high school intern at Applied Biosystems in Foster City, the 17-year-old Dean will purify the DNA so it can be used to analyze how a human cell becomes diseased, or how a patient might respond to a specific drug. Dean is applying the biotech lab skills she learned at San Mateo High School through an innovative four-year program that teaches basic biotechnology concepts and lab skills, and is a unique partnership between the school and a consortium of biotechnology companies.
