Can transgenes be kept on a leash?” ask Marvier and Van Acker in the [attached] review article. “No”, they answer, “the movement of transgenes beyond their intended destination is a virtual certainty”, and furthermore “it is unlikely that transgenes can be retracted once they have escaped”. Would these bold statements engage students, revealing the realities and complexities of gene...
Plant morphology reflects evolutionary solutions to environmental constraints. In this experiment, students use this principle to predict the climate at their site. They collect and measure a set of traits on local tree leaf samples during the first meeting. At the following meeting(s), they pool their data and are introduced to a global database of climate and leaf morphology. In groups, they...
During a single lab period, students simulate colonization and drift in artificial communities to understand how these processes affect distributions of biodiversity in small versus large communities with varying degrees of isolation. Plastic bins represent islands, and are situated to represent different degrees of isolation. Ziploc bags of candy represent individuals in the communities and...
This is a multi-week laboratory exercise that involves sequencing a pair of mitochondrial genes in cows. Using data from several samples, students calculate diversity (variation within species) and divergence (variation between species). The exercise reinforces principles in molecular genetics (DNA purification, PCR, etc.) and introduces principles in molecular population genetics. We provide...
This lab exercise is an active learning introduction to techniques used to analyze soil microbiome data. Students will also learn about forming hypotheses, what kind of questions can be answered with this data, and practice the scientific method.
This resource was developed with support from the National Science Foundation.
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