Whitehead
Institute's One-day Workshop:
Incorporating Bioinformatics into the High School
Biology Curriculum
Wednesday, August 15
10:00 am- 2:30 pm
10:00 am
Welcome and Introduction
Amy Tremblay, Public Programs
Officer
Fran Lewitter, Director of
Bioinformatics
(7th Floor Classroom)
10:30 am Activity presentation/hands on session: Searching for Fossil Genes
Blast intro slides pdf Blast intro slides ppt Activity handout ORF finder Activity
Mouse CDS Mouse protein Sequences for ORFfinder Activity
David Form, Nashoba
Regional High School
(7th Floor Classroom)
Activity Description:
With this activity, students play the roles of producers of animal
feed. They use BLAST to identify pseudogenes and
compare them with their normal counterparts in humans and a variety of
mammals. The information is used to determine which of these mammals
requires a source of vitamin C in their diet. The lab is used as a
springboard to discuss pseudogenes as molecular
evidence for evolution. It also reinforces an understanding of the
relationships between genes, proteins and traits.
"Searching for Fossil Genes"
was developed by David Form and is routinely used in his 10th grade Biology
classes.
11:30 am Discussion
a. Using this
activity with students at various levels
b.
Extensions
to this activity
12:00 pm Lunch (7th Floor Faculty
Lounge)
1:00 pm Introduction
to NCBI/Ensembl tools including BLAST and searching for genes in databases
Slides pdf Slides pptx Hands on
Fran Lewitter, Director of
Bioinformatics
(7th Floor Classroom)
2:00pm Discussion & Wrap-up
a. Other uses for
BLAST in the classroom
b. Strategies
for incorporating Bioinformatics into the HS curriculum
2:30 pm Adjourn
Useful Links
NCBI
Ensembl
Whitehead Bioinformatics Education
Pairwise Sequence Analysis - Global and Local
Biology WorkBench at San Diego Supercomputer Center