Vince Gallagher looks at bio manufacturing in this edition of State of Education.

These high school science teachers are doing a little lab work all part of a three day workshop at the Hudson Valley Community College in Troy.

"We're going around to various community colleges bringing in teachers from the neighborhood to provide training for the teachers so that they can train their students in bio-manufacturing," said Northeast Bio Manufacturing Center Executive Director Sonia Wallman.

And what is bio manufacturing? Well, it's defined as "using living organisms to manufacture a product", which is what they're doing here today.

"I have two test tubes, and they both have e-coli in them, and in one of the test tubes I have inserted a gene actually, it's a plasmid that has three genes. One of them is the gfp gene, and that will make this bacteria if they're successful building up the plasma, they glow in the dark," said teacher Vicky Boulay.

Which they did. In this case, it's protein from a jellyfish but there's a reason for all this work here. It's to spark students interest in technology and bio-manufacturing back in the classroom.

"And all of these industries need people to work there that are able to do the jobs and they would like to get people that have some kind of background with this in school if possible," said teacher Dr. Edward Bein.

Education in bio manufacturing can do more than just give students additional career options...with the ever-growing demand for high-tech jobs; it can also have a positive effect on the state economy.

"The industries, bio-technology, nanotechnology, all related science technologies, are looking for people that are experienced in some of the techniques, nomenclatures, procedures, so that they can move in and be more effective workers for them," Bein said.

While teachers and students get it all down to a science.