Reading, writing, arithmetic and tracing the origin of genetic code.

They’re the foundation of the education that four City Honors School students are getting through a partnership with Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute.

Jimmitti Teysir is the lone senior. She is joined by junior Dana Hogan and sophomores Rasheen Powell and Fiona Hennig. Teysir and Hogan are working on ribosomal genetic sequences. Additionally, all work on DNA fingerprints.

The high schoolers will spend up to 14 Fridays at the research center, where they mostly work on computers the first year or so, then it’s off to the lab, where faculty members mentor them to jump-start careers in scientific research.

“This is not work we’ve made up; it’s part of our lab research,” says Jane Griffin, main research scientist at the institute.

Students apply for the program midway through freshman year. But these four knew well before ninth grade that science was in their futures.