Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- Modified Organisms (3rd/4th)
Good Afternoon Parents and Students!
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 are definitely winning so far.
Today we covered gene editing and how to read the genetic and protein code. These codes (DNA and amino acids) can then be identified through huge databases (NCBI) which will tell us the organism it belongs to.
In the DNA sequences search. 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!
So if your wondering this is where the YMCA NATNAT song they were singing in the hall came from…we looked up this sequence and it was actually part of a bacterial gene sequence…go figure!
Our final experiment of the day was our “petri art.” This bacteria art uses the genetically modified bacteria from last weeks virtual bio-lab (red pigment into e. coli) and lets the student create living art work which we will see on our last day!
Enjoy the week!
Josh