Fall SAVY 2017, Day 4- Genetic Engineering: The Science of Modified Organisms (5th/6th)

Posted by morganr1 on Monday, October 16, 2017 in Grade 5, Grade 6, SAVY.

Good Afternoon Parents and Students!

Today we covered gene editing and how it relates to sequencing technology. While it sounds pretty complicated it’s really just how computers read DNA codes. These codes can then be identified through huge databases (NCBI) and thus the protein it will make can be predicted.

We started today by playing our favorite game where students write down something special to them (favorite food, place to visit) and I try to guess who it was. I will say I am getting better, but the students definitely winning so far. We also went over how to transform E. coli again but this time with banana perfume!

Then finally we fished the day by learning how to search amino acid and dna sequences from a database. They really had a BLAST. (pun intended…it’s called a BLAST search) Students got to makeup their own sequences and figure out what organism it came from. Alot were from bacteria but some came from humans, fungi, and cave fish!

Next week we will get to use transformed E.coli and create petri-plate art with live bacteria!
(saved this so everyone can do it since some people were gone for fall break!)

Enjoy the week!

Josh