My biotech ideas
Biotechnology lessons I pulled together based on information that is "out there".
Many of these documents are based on information that is freely available on the Internet (WWW), textbooks, or journals. I did not intentionally borrow anyone's unique ideas without crediting them. If you find that I did not indicate where unique ideas came from, please let me know so I can remove the document from this site. I have no intention to present someone else's ideas as my own.
Quick jumps to other parts of the page
Lectures on content stuff, not directly related to a lab:
- Acids, Bases, and Buffers
- Replication, transcription, translation lecture(.doc)
- Biotech websites with links (.doc)- I do not know if the links still work.
- DNA replication websites(.doc)
- Mitosis and meiosis(.doc)
- List of some biotech ed websites with a tiny description
Lectures relating to lab protocols or procedures
- How to distinguish organisms- student sheet(.doc)
- How to distinguish organisms- teacher notes(.doc)
- Types of DNA analyses (.doc) used to categorize organisms notes
- Agarose vs Polyacrylamide gels- teacher notes(.doc)
- Agarose vs Polyacrylamide gels- overhead master sheet(.doc)
- Agarose vs Polyacrylamide gels- student sheet(.doc)
- Comparison of PCR and Replication- student sheet(.doc)
- Comparison of PCR and Replication- teacher notes(.doc)
- Notes for Electrophoresis of PCR products (.doc)
Handouts to accompany videos
- Cracking the Code of Life and GATTACA handout(.doc)
- Making Babies follow up questions(.doc)
- Making Babies and Good Egg article questions(.doc)
Activities that are not necessarily wet labs
- Genetic Testing Scenarios
- Chart to help organize information for Genetic Testing Scenarios
Virtual DNA Fingerprinting computer program
- This is a great software program that can be downloaded for free. Click on this link to get to its webpage.
- I wrote questions (.doc)to go with the software. You'll want to make sure they're appropriate for your students before you use them.
Textbooks
- Molecular Biology Made Simple and Fun- Cache River Press. They use frames on their website, so you'll need to go to the section on Cache River Science books and look for the monkey book. Even though this book does not have any questions at the end of the chapters, I used it. It clearly explains genetics and biotechnology, and has a sense of humor. Plus, my students found the book to be readable and actually felt like they were able to learn from it. (I wrote some guide questions to go with the chapters. The chapter questions go with either the first or the second edition of the book. They are currently selling a 3rd edtion.)
- Ellyn Daugherty is publishing a high school biotech textbook which will be excellent. It was published after I stopped teaching biotech so I have not used her book, but knowing Ellyn, it will most likely become the standard for high school biotechnology courses.
- Biotechnology Unzipped- while not a textbook, it has much useful information. I actually did not use it beyond chapter 1 so I only have questions to go with chapter 1.
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Solution math (doc.)
(I can not take credit for knowing much of the math well enough to have created this. I searched several websites, books, and protocols to get the information for this document. Please check it for errors, especially since I found discrepancies among the sources I used.)
One of the BEST resources for solution preparation protocols is the Flinn catalog. If you don't have one, contact them to get one.
Basics of lab solutions (.doc)- notes I wrote that are NOT perfect.
Solution exercises (.doc)- like with everything, double check that they make sense before you use them.
Solutions students can make (.doc)- I had students make up some of the reagents we'd be using throughout the term.
Lab Notebooks:
- Since we were funded by EAROP, I had money to buy real lab notebooks. Students turned in the yellow sheet and kept the white sheets for their own reference. I bought the books from Hayden-McNeill. There are lots of instructions out on the web for how to organize a lab notebook. This is a copy of instructions (.doc)I handed out to my students.
- Instructions on how to tape a photograph (.doc)in a lab notebook.
DNA labs
There are tons of DNA extraction labs out there. I used the spinach lab from the Biotechnology on a Shoestring book. One year we did a variety of vegetables/fruits using the protocol. I had been told that strawberries gave the best results, and for us that is what we found. Strawberries gave a huge amount of DNA.
This is a general DNA extraction protocol from plants. My goal with this lab was to get the students experience on equipment and with techniques moreso than to get DNA from a plant. If all you want is DNA, then this is NOT the best protocol to use. It takes two days to do- and I was on 90 min periods.
DNA extraction from many plants (.doc)
Having to do with running gels, PCR, micropipetting
- Pipetting is fun! (.doc)- lesson on micropipetting
- Restriction enzyme digest- sometimes we did this as a hands-on lab, other years we just did it on paper. We used the curriculum developed by the Partnership for Plant Genomics Education (PPGE at UC Davis).
- Pouring and loading gels(.doc)
- Agarose vs polyacrylamide
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- Student sheet(.doc)
- Notes sheet(.doc)
- Overhead sheet(.doc)
PCR labs sponsored by BABEC- these are some organizational sheets I wrote to accompany the labs
- Alu- 4 sheets, one per gel; overview sheet (.doc)of how lanes were done on the gels so we could tell the gels apart.
- mtDNA (.doc)- paper for the check-out gel (to make sure there are products from the PCR so that we don't waste sequencing ingredients)
- Lab jobs- To distribute the prep and the clean-up and to prevent last minute "oops I forgot to have someone do the +ve control" I made lab job sheets.
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- BioRad has devised several very good and easy to use kits. I used to use pGLO, purification of GFP, and size exclusion chromatography. BABEC teachers are supported with consumables for pGLO and GFP column chromatography. Although I did change some of the follow-up questions because BioRad does not correctly utilize controls, due to proprietary rights I am not comfortable posting my alternative handouts online.
Other labs
- Acids and bases
- Serial dilution lab
- Serial dilution lab with similar instructions, but shorter
- Beano- a very quick lab I do on day 1 just to get kids starting to think about what biotech is and how it may be subtley or not so subtley involved with our lives.
- Cheese- we used the protocol in the Addison Wesley biology supplement book. This is a link to another website that has the protocol.
- it works better if you add 10 g of dry milk- get more solids
- adding herbs to the cheese as it incubates does not let it taste great
- it comes out like cream cheese
- it is actually good on crackers with jelly
- only use glassware that is kept separate for food labs and make sure the glassware is washed before students use it
- Plant tissue culture
- Kitchen Culture Kits works great! We did not have 100% success, but we did get to see callouses and shoots grow from plant leaf cuttings. And yes! We did this in a classroom that did not have any hoods. In fact, we only had 1 sink, but that is another story.
- The day before using the culture media, we had to autoclave it. This is a brief list of instructions students did the day we autoclaved. If you really want to know what to do, you should consult the Kitchen Culture Kits company.
- Instruction sheet (.doc)to go with cheese lab and plant tissue culture lab- we set up both of them simultaneously.
- Pineapple lab- there are several pineapple labs available online. Mine is not especially that great. I also can not take credit for being the brains behind the lab.
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Projects
- Book Chat(.doc)- even before the push for literacy I asked my students to read 2 books, one of which had to be non-fiction. I did this to show them that one can be a scientist and NOT have to work at the lab bench every day. Journalists, writers, and other non-bench folks can be actively involved with science and how it is communicated.
- List of books I owned that students could borrow to read
- Company report (.doc)
- rubric(.doc) to go with company report
- Sample(.doc) of a company report
- Career report form- not exactly related to the "Company report" but this may be a document you'll want to adapt to your school's career education expectations for students.
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- Nanobiotechnology lesson (.doc)- Students worked in small groups, read a small set of articles that I grabbed off the Internet, and then did a brief presentation on the information. I did not include the articles here, in part, because of copyright respect and because the information may be outdated by now.
- Sign-up sheet for articles (.doc), nanobiotechnology
- Forensics lesson (.doc)- Students worked individually on one aspect of forensics. Even though not everything on the list is directly related to biotechnology, most of the topics relate to having to do proper lab science. I do not know how many of the links still work.
- Disease Project(.doc)- Students researched a human genetic disease. For the disease to qualify for the project, its corresponding mutant gene location has to be known. Students designed an informative brochure, did an oral presentation on their disease, and did a written project that demonstrate empathy or understanding of what it means to have the disease.
- Your World Our World Presentations(.doc)- at the beginning of the term students worked during class to design a poster that reflected an issue of Your World, Our World. It is an excellent biotechnology magazine that is now published by the Biotechnology Institute.
- AGW presentations(.doc)- Ag West is an organization in Canada that focuses on agricultural biotechnology. They publish quarterly newsletters that highlight some aspect of biotechnology. Students were asked to choose an article to present and took 5 to 10 minutes to share the information in a professional way to the class. Presentations were staggered throughout the term. This links to a sign-up sheet(.doc)that lists many of the articles you can access for free online.
- Children's book- Students made a book appropriate for a fifth grader to understand.
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Test parts- These are some drawings of gels that I used on tests/quizzes.
- Alu gel for test
- Child gel for test
- DNA gel for test
- DNA ladder for test
- Dyes on gel for test
- More gel diagrams
- Alu / PCR quiz
General documents that I can't figure out where else to place
- Biotech Information Inventory- a list of topics given to students early in the semsester so I can get a clue about what they know or don't know.
Casual advice-
I was emailed some questions about starting up a class. The info may be helpful for others, so if you want to read a copy of it, click here.