7th Grade Biotechnology Day
April 25, 2008
On Wednesday, April 23rd, seventh grade students at Farragut Community Schools participated in various science activities that are designed for college-level students. Dave Seilstad from Iowa State University Extension and Doug Doty from Fremont County Extension visited Mrs. Erickson’s classroom at Farragut to engage students in learning about biotechnology.
Students began the day by extracting DNA from fruits such as strawberries and kiwi. To do this, students cut up the fruit, placed them in a mixture designed to break down cell walls and further broke down the cell walls by smashing the fruit while over heat. Students were then able to place the liquid from the fruits into a test tube with ethanol. Thousands of strands of DNA were visible in the test tubes. Seventh grade student, Alexia Blank, said “the best thing was extracting the DNA from fruit because I learned how to do something new.” Erin Hays said the best part of yesterday was “when we got to extract fruit DNA, because I could do the experiment at home and because I could see the DNA!”
Students then discussed how various genes affect our lives. They were able to test PCT paper to see if they were “tasters.” This is a dominant trait amongst humans that affects why some people like certain foods and not others. Students then tasted two soybeans. The first had not been altered in any way. The second soybean’s genes had been altered to take the “bad” taste out of the bean. Most students agreed that the second soybean tasted much better.
Students enjoyed making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to demonstrate what can happen when you have a mutation in DNA. The first sandwich was made in a normal manner showing DNA was in the correct sequence. The second sandwich was made without a knife- one of the students actually had to spread peanut butter and jelly on the bread with his fingers to make the sandwich. This demonstrated what can happen when there is a mutation in DNA that causes no visible change, such as diabetes. The third sandwich was made without picking up the first slice of bread- a student had to spread peanut butter and jelly on her hand to complete the sandwich. This demonstrated what happens when there is a mutation in DNA that causes visible change to a person, such as Down Syndrome. Trey Varellas said the best part of his day was “making the sandwich because I got to put peanut butter on Charrose’s hand.”
Students also learned how to use pippetters to extract samples of liquids, which they then mixed with control substances. After mixing the liquids, students placed samples in a container which pulls DNA through the gel to show the fingerprint of the DNA. “I learned a DNA fingerprint looks like a bar code” replied Angelica May when asked what she learned from the day.
7th Grade Biotechnology Day
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| Date | Subject | Posted by: |
|---|---|---|
| 04/28/2008 | It was a fun day for all of us, I'm... | Ellie Lutt |
