Understanding the stages of meiosis has always been a challenge for students. What if it was as easy as doing laundry? Our ChromoSock® activities are built with that concept in mind by having students use custom-sewn socks to mimic chromosomes. Modeling meiosis has never been easier, and this introductory activity is sure to engage your students and positively impact their understanding of key concepts.
Let this HudsonAlpha kit guide your students’ investigation into mutation accumulation in cells progressing toward cancer. Using digital vignettes from HudsonAlpha’s video Focus on Cancer, beads, and dice, this unique demonstration of chance and randomization lets students simulate the fate of a population of cells across multiple cell divisions. It illustrates how a population of cells becomes more varied over time, and how those changes may lead a group of cells to become more cancerous.
Offering a fresh approach to the traditional karyotyping activity, Disorder Detectives is sure to engage your students and pique their interest in the impact of chromosome disorders on human disease. Taking on the role of cytogeneticists, students diagnose the diseases of 15 different patients using fully reusable materials, while incorporating real clinical symptoms. Students deal with a variety of abnormalities resulting from nondisjunction, deletion, inversion, and translocation.
In today’s fast-paced world of genetics, there are a tremendous amount of DNA sequences being generated by scientists around the world. Unlocking the power of these sequences requires a specific skill set and a keen understanding of using databases and conducting sequence comparisons. In this lab, students use a case study approach to learning by interpreting a section of DNA sequence and trying to determine its role in a specific disease. Designed for 30 students working in pairs.
Cancer diagnostics and treatments are on the front line of the biotechnological revolution. Your students get into the action by taking on the roles of researcher, clinician, and genetic counselor as they attempt to diagnose a family of patients. Using pedigrees and a simulated DNA-based diagnostic, students explore the genes linked to hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) in a fictitious family.
Expose your students to the use of human genome sequencing data in medicine by allowing them to take on the role of clinical scientists. Students examine multiple pieces of evidence to determine whether a genetic variant is likely to cause a patient’s symptoms. Students must support their claim using evidence and explain their reasoning. Kit is designed for a class of 30 students working in groups and includes a digital slide presentation and a script for guiding students through the activity.
Ever wish learning meiosis was as easy as folding socks? The ChromoSock® is a specialty sock, made in the US, that comes in different sizes, lengths, and colors to help demonstrate the differences between chromosomes and the genetic information they carry. The Modeling Mendel’s Laws Classroom Kit takes students further in their understanding of meiosis by having them: – Model Mendel’s Laws, Review process of Meiosis, Use alleles to predict phenotype.
This lab walks the student through each stage of meiosis and provides instruction, support, and explanation, both in guided instruction and visually to ensure student understanding. Your class will then model the events of meiosis while focusing on Mendel’s laws, investigating the formation of gametes, fertilization, and the possible combination of alleles from fertilization. Kit is designed for 32 students working in pairs.
Goldfish are the most common aquarium fish in the world. Through thousands of years of selective breeding, they have produced a variety of physical characteristics and traits. Some of which are very desirable amongst hobbyists, collectors, and kids who want their first pet. Rare, unique, and fancy goldfish can sell for thousands of dollars each. In this fun and impactful series of activities, students take on the role of goldfish breeders to investigate genetic phenotypes, analyze and interpret offspring data to determine inheritance patterns, and prepare a goldfish breeding plan.
With the Authentic Inheritance Patterns Kit, students take on the roles of geneticist and genetic counselor to determine the genetic disease of a hypothetical 6-year-old patient named Mason, the disease’s inheritance pattern, and the likelihood that other family members have the same disease. To do so, student groups each examine 1 of 5 unique scenarios that include family pedigrees. They also explore how a disease can be caused by genetic changes in many different genes and can be inherited in a dominant, recessive, or X-linked pattern. Featuring reusable case cards and decals, this kit is perfect for teaching pedigrees and inheritance within an authentic, engaging medical context.
The How Do Polygenic Risk Scores Stack Up? Kit uses authentic data and graphical representations to address 2 central questions: How are traits, such as disease risk, distributed across a population? And how can identifying an individual’s risk shape health care decision-making? Recent advances have led to models that combine the impact of genetic risk factors for an individual developing a particular disease into a single calculation known as a polygenic risk score (PRS). To help students understand how these models can affect health decisions, the activity employs 3-dimensional boxes to represent normal and skewed population curves, giving learners a visually impactful hands-on experience with the data. Students use these curves to examine polygenic risk scores and assess a person’s risk for 2 different complex diseases. In addition to teaching essential data and graphing skills, the activity also highlights a weakness in current genomic research—lack of diversity—with the hope of equipping the next generation of researchers, health care workers, and consumers to address this critical issue.