Quiz Tomorrow

Tomorrow you will have a quiz on restriction enzymes, plasmids, gel electrophoresis and the timid mice article.

You will have 20-25 minutes for the quiz, then you will start to go over next week's lab.

Gel Electrophoresis

Yesterday you were able to practice micropippetting so that today when you did the gel electrophoresis using restriction enzymes you already had some experience.  While your gels were running, we reviewing the Williams Syndrome Article and watched this clip fromABC News about what it is like to have this genetic disorder.  Diving in deeper to protein structure you made wire models of proteins and worked with Fold.it to practice unraveling proteins. While you were at lunch the gels were stained in Gel Red and after lunch I went back and took pictures of the results. Below is part of one of the best gels.  Does it belong to you?  Find out tomorrow!

Restriction Enzymes and Gel Electrophoresis

Today in class you learned about restriction enzymes and gel electrophoresis. Tonight for homework complete the virtual gel electrophoresis lab here and answer the questions below.

1. Draw a gel with the wells and label which side has the positive electric current and which side is negative.
2. When the segments of DNA move through the wells, how are they sorted?

The virtual lab: go through the five steps for the virtual lab.  Briefly summarize what happens at each of the five steps.

Homework for Tuesday

Use pages 208-211 and 215-218 to help you answer the question on the worksheet. This homework should take you no more than 20 minutes.

Use the remaining ten minutes of homework time to watch the crash course video on heredity below.

Timid Mice and Heritablity

Today we had a busy day in class.  You extracted DNA from strawberries, then we read the NYT article "Timid Mice Made Daring by Removing One Gene" as well examined the abstract and graphs from the original article in Cell.  You spent the remaining time in class working on the timid mice questions that will be used for the group grade among the 2FS teachers.

Tonight for homework, please the Utah Genetics Heredity and Traits Site  Click on "what is a trait?" (the blue box on the left side of the page). You need to spend 30 minutes working through the animation.  Do not take any notes, pretend like you are watching a movie.  Depending on quickly you read, you may go through the animation up to three times.

Test Today and DNA Extraction

Today you had a test on cells, DNA, transcription and translation. Tonight for homework please read the DNA extraction lab protocol.  In addition, please read the FAQ's about DNA extraction from Utah Genetics here.

Born to Run Article

Tonight for homework, study for you test.  Tomorrow you will get a copy of the Born to Run Article.