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Building creatures with the central dogma of biology

Author(s): Melissa Skyer

National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology

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Summary:
Activity that demonstrates how nucleotide changes can affect phenotypes

Licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 02 Dec 2019 doi:10.25334/FF4P-JE38 - cite this

Description

Teach the concepts of the central dogma of biology with a hands on activity of building cute creatures (bug babies) from candy!  Students will practice transcribing DNA into RNA from a template, and then use the RNA sequence to build amino acids. Using a “protein decoder” will allow for translation of RNA into specific traits.  Bug babies will then be built using marshmallows and other household supplies; demonstrating firsthand how the alteration of a few nucleotides can result in very different organismal phenotypes.

Please cite this work as: 

Skyer, Melissa. (2019). Building creatures with the central dogma of biologyOpening the Pathway to Technician Careers: A Conference for Biology Teachers of Deaf Students, QUBES Educational Resources.

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