From: Irene Yun (ireneyun@stanfordalumni.org)
Date: Fri Mar 26 2004 - 06:46:12 PST
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 06:46:12 -0800 From: Irene Yun <ireneyun@stanfordalumni.org> Subject: Genetics hands On Activities Message-ID: <036icZoUm8912S02.1080312372@uwdvg002.cms.usa.net>
Look in the Exploratorium's Human Body Explorations for the fruit DNA
extraction. That was
excellent.
I also did an activity over the summer where students used 1 meter sections of
calculator tape
(those long rolls of 2 inch wide paper for calculators and receipts) to create
their own genetic
codes - 1 letter per cm. The next day, I staged a crime where someone's car
got broken into in
the school parking lot and the police were going to do DNA tests on some blood
left on the
broken window to try to find the thief and make sure that a student didn't do
it. We cleared the
floor of desks then used a fake restriction enzyme (ATT, cut between the T's)
to cut their DNA
then run it out across the floor by size (your own supersized gel box) - for
each fragment, it
moves 100 inches minus the number of letters from the loading well. I marked
out a 9 foot x 15
foot box on the floor with masking tape and created 1/2 food wide wells along
the 15 foot
length. Maybe this activity would be useful? I used the DNA from the car (the
thief's DNA) as an
example for the students to run out their own DNA - turns out nobody matched
the thief!
Good luck,
Irene Yun
Archway School
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