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1. How does DNA make living things unique?

2. What is the structure and function of DNA?
3. How does DNA determine how proteins form, and how are proteins essential for life processes?

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Engage Video: How a Firefly's Tail Make Light

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Engage Video: How a Firefly's Tail Make Light

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One reason that fireflies glow is to attract a mate. Males and females of the same species will flash signals back and forth as a way of communicating. Each firefly species has its own particular pattern. For example, the fireflies of one species will fly around in the night sky and dive steeply just as the flash begins and turn upward to make a distinctive J-shaped pattern of light. Female fireflies hang out on a tree branch or in the grass while the males fly around showing off their best flashes. When a female recognizes the flash from a male of the same species, she will answer with her best flash.

Another reason that fireflies glow is to avoid predators. Fireflies are filled with a nasty-tasting chemical called lucibufagens, and after a predator gets a mouthful, it quickly learns to associate the firefly's glow with this bad taste! So not only does the flashing help attract a mate, it also warns predators to stay away.

One species of firefly that can't make its own lucibufagens acquires it by eating others that can. To lure victims, these fireflies mimic the flashing pattern of another species. When the unsuspecting male approaches to find a mate, he instead becomes a tasty treat to the tricky firefly.

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One reason that fireflies glow is to attract a mate. Males and females of the same species will flash signals back and forth as a way of communicating. Each firefly species has its own particular pattern.

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Student Activity: Meiosis How does sexual reproduction lead to genetic variation? 

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Student Activity: Meiosis How does sexual reproduction lead to genetic variation? 

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Engage Video/Phenomena: The Science of Skin Color

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Engage Video/Phenomena: The Science of Skin Color

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The science of skin color - Angela Koine Flynn

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Student Notes Page: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UmhCcK9x1esPyZoSP5M8W9rqyZDfc1Gb/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106834096082613860784&rtpof=true&sd=true

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Student Assignment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FblYqTPFzS-pEBgO3YsLoJwbVTdBhpaA/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106834096082613860784&rtpof=true&sd=true

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1. What are the causes and effects of changes in DNA?
2. How do mutations and gene expression contribute to inheritable genetic variations?

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Welcome to CK-12 Foundation | CK-12 Foundation

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How are traits passed from parent(s) to offspring?

How can we predict traits?

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How does natural selection drive changes in populations?

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20 minute task card: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aydJ9WBr4oLg5Hl31AFHg2jVmhK6enWm/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106834096082613860784&rtpof=true&sd=true

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Go through the process of synthesizing proteins through RNA transcription and translation. Learn about the many steps involved in protein synthesis including: unzipping of DNA, formation of mRNA, attaching of mRNA to the ribosome, and linking of amino acids to form a protein.

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Go through the process of synthesizing proteins throu... | Gizmo

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Video: What happens when your DNA is damaged? 

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Video: What happens when your DNA is damaged? 

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What happens when your DNA is damaged? - Monica Menesini

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HS-LS3-1 Assessment - Chromosomal Inheritance

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1. Describe three (3) main differences between DNA and RNA.  Why do cells use RNA?

2. Explain the “central dogma” of molecular biology (in your own words).  Use the following terms in your description:  DNA, RNA, protein, transcription, translation, nucleus, ribosome.

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HS-LS3-1 Assessment - Mysterious Mutation

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Welcome to CK-12 Foundation | CK-12 Foundation

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Welcome to CK-12 Foundation | CK-12 Foundation

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PT LS3-2: The Twins with Different Skin Color

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PT LS3-2: The Twins with Different Skin Color

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HS-LS3-2 Assessment - The Twins with Different Skin Colors (NY)

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Student Exploration: Genetic Variation as the Outcome of Mutations

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Student Exploration: Genetic Variation as the Outcome of Mutations

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The Outcome of Mutation [Internet]. Salt Lake City (UT): Genetic Science Learning Center; 2017 [cited 2022 Apr 19] Available from https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/evolution/outcomes

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In your own words, describe the process in which DNA is transcribed and then translated into amino acids and finally proteins. Draw a picture and use it in your explanation.

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Mutation Generates New Alleles

The whole human family is one species with the same genes. Mutation creates slightly different versions of the same genes, called alleles. These small differences in DNA sequence make every individual unique. They account for the variation we see in human hair color, skin color, height, shape, behavior, and susceptibility to disease. Individuals in other species vary too, in both physical appearance and behavior.

Genetic variation is useful because it helps populations change over time. Variations that help an organism survive and reproduce are passed on to the next generation. Variations that hinder survival and reproduction are eliminated from the population. This process of natural selection can lead to significant changes in the appearance, behavior, or physiology of individuals in a population, in just a few generations.

Once new alleles arise, meiosis and sexual reproduction combine different alleles in new ways to increase genetic variation.

It's useful to think of mutation as a process that creates genetic variation. We often refer to a mutation as a thing-the genetic variation itself. This approach can be useful when it comes to a gene associated with a disease: the disease allele carries a mutation, a DNA change that compromises the protein's function. However, this approach gives mutation a bad name.

It's important to remember that losing the function of a gene doesn't always affect health. For example, most mammals have hundreds of genes that code for olfactory receptors, proteins that help us smell. Losing one of these genes probably doesn't make all that much difference.

In contrast to variations that cause disease, there are many more examples of variations that are neither good nor bad, but just different-like blood types and eye color. Just like with disease alleles, the process of mutation creates these more neutral variations. But with neutral variations, it can be impossible to tell which allele is the "normal" one that existed first and which is the "mutant"-and the distinction is often meaningless.

Mutation creates variations in protein-coding portions of genes that can affect the protein itself. But even more often, it creates variations in the "switches" that control when and where a protein is active and how much protein is made.

Lactase is an enzyme that helps infants break down lactose, a sugar in milk. Normally the gene that codes for lactase is active in babies and then turned off at about age four. When people who don't make lactase consume milk, they experience gas, nausea, and discomfort. But some people have a variation in a genetic switch that keeps the lactase gene active. This variation is called "lactase persistence," and people who have it can keep milk in their diets even as adults.

Other drivers of mutation: Environmental agents

Radiation, chemicals, byproducts of cellular metabolism, free radicals, ultraviolet rays from the sun-these agents damage thousands of nucleotides in each of our cells every day. They affect the nucleotides themselves: converting one base to another, knocking a base off its backbone, or even causing a break in the DNA strand.

Most of the time, mutation is reversed. DNA repair machines are constantly at work in our cells, fixing mismatched nucleotides and splicing broken DNA strands back together. Yet some DNA changes remain. If a cell accumulates too many changes-if its DNA is so damaged that repair machinery cannot fix it-it either stops dividing or it self-destructs. If any of these processes go wrong, the cell could become cancerous.

When we put on sun screen, we are protecting ourselves against mutation in somatic cells-the cells that make up the body and are not involved in reproduction.&ZeroWidthSpace; Only when DNA changes are carried in egg and sperm cells are they passed to the next generation. Believe it or not, a certain amount of sloppiness is built into the system. Without mutation there would be no variation, and without variation there would be no evolution.

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Mutation Generates New Alleles The whole human family is one species with the same genes. Mutation creates slightly different versions of the same genes, called alleles. These small differences in DNA sequence make every individual unique. They account for the variation we see in human hair color, skin color, height, shape, behavior, and susceptibility to disease.

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Student Activity: Protein Structure- DNA Mutations

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Student Activity: Protein Structure- DNA Mutations

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Copyright © 2017 The Concord Consortium. All rights reserved. This activity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License . The software is licensed under Simplified BSD , MIT or Apache 2.0 licenses. Please provide attribution to the Concord Consortium and the URL http://concord.org.

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Copyright © 2017 The Concord Consortium. All rights reserved. This activity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License . The software is licensed under Simplified BSD , MIT or Apache 2.0 licenses. Please provide attribution to the Concord Consortium and the URL http://concord.org.

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Mutation Generates New Alleles

The whole human family is one species with the same genes. Mutation creates slightly different versions of the same genes, called alleles. These small differences in DNA sequence make every individual unique. They account for the variation we see in human hair color, skin color, height, shape, behavior, and susceptibility to disease. Individuals in other species vary too, in both physical appearance and behavior.

Genetic variation is useful because it helps populations change over time. Variations that help an organism survive and reproduce are passed on to the next generation. Variations that hinder survival and reproduction are eliminated from the population. This process of natural selection can lead to significant changes in the appearance, behavior, or physiology of individuals in a population, in just a few generations.

Once new alleles arise, meiosis and sexual reproduction combine different alleles in new ways to increase genetic variation.

It's useful to think of mutation as a process that creates genetic variation. We often refer to a mutation as a thing-the genetic variation itself. This approach can be useful when it comes to a gene associated with a disease: the disease allele carries a mutation, a DNA change that compromises the protein's function. However, this approach gives mutation a bad name.

It's important to remember that losing the function of a gene doesn't always affect health. For example, most mammals have hundreds of genes that code for olfactory receptors, proteins that help us smell. Losing one of these genes probably doesn't make all that much difference.

In contrast to variations that cause disease, there are many more examples of variations that are neither good nor bad, but just different-like blood types and eye color. Just like with disease alleles, the process of mutation creates these more neutral variations. But with neutral variations, it can be impossible to tell which allele is the "normal" one that existed first and which is the "mutant"-and the distinction is often meaningless.

Mutation creates variations in protein-coding portions of genes that can affect the protein itself. But even more often, it creates variations in the "switches" that control when and where a protein is active and how much protein is made.

Lactase is an enzyme that helps infants break down lactose, a sugar in milk. Normally the gene that codes for lactase is active in babies and then turned off at about age four. When people who don't make lactase consume milk, they experience gas, nausea, and discomfort. But some people have a variation in a genetic switch that keeps the lactase gene active. This variation is called "lactase persistence," and people who have it can keep milk in their diets even as adults.

Other drivers of mutation: Environmental agents

Radiation, chemicals, byproducts of cellular metabolism, free radicals, ultraviolet rays from the sun-these agents damage thousands of nucleotides in each of our cells every day. They affect the nucleotides themselves: converting one base to another, knocking a base off its backbone, or even causing a break in the DNA strand.

Most of the time, mutation is reversed. DNA repair machines are constantly at work in our cells, fixing mismatched nucleotides and splicing broken DNA strands back together. Yet some DNA changes remain. If a cell accumulates too many changes-if its DNA is so damaged that repair machinery cannot fix it-it either stops dividing or it self-destructs. If any of these processes go wrong, the cell could become cancerous.

When we put on sun screen, we are protecting ourselves against mutation in somatic cells-the cells that make up the body and are not involved in reproduction.&ZeroWidthSpace; Only when DNA changes are carried in egg and sperm cells are they passed to the next generation. Believe it or not, a certain amount of sloppiness is built into the system. Without mutation there would be no variation, and without variation there would be no evolution.

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Mutation Generates New Alleles The whole human family is one species with the same genes. Mutation creates slightly different versions of the same genes, called alleles. These small differences in DNA sequence make every individual unique. They account for the variation we see in human hair color, skin color, height, shape, behavior, and susceptibility to disease.

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Quizizz - The world's most engaging learning platform

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Find and create gamified quizzes, lessons, presentations, and flashcards for students, employees, and everyone else. Get started for free!

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Genetic variation is important because when conditions change (food becomes scarce, environment changes), some individuals in a population will be more likely to have variations that will allow them to survive. Those who reproduce pass their genes to the next generation. Variation helps species survive, and it's the reason species change over time.

In asexual reproduction, variation comes mainly from mutation. Mutation is a natural process that introduces permanent changes in a DNA sequence. However, microbes also acquire genetic variation through transformation, transduction, and conjugation (gene transfer). These mechanisms often come into play when conditions are harsh.

In sexual reproduction, variation comes from both mutation and recombination. Mutation creates the different versions (or alleles) of the same gene. Parental alleles are then shuffled-or recombined-during meiosis. Because of recombination, sexual reproduction produces more variation than asexual does.

Most commonly, traits are influenced by multiple genes and the environment. So for most traits, patterns of inheritance are complex and unpredictable. For instance, when a sexually reproducing organism inherits a defective or "broken" allele that codes for a non-functional protein, the second copy can often make up for the loss. This type of interplay between alleles, especially when traits are influenced by multiple genes, makes predicting inheritance difficult, if not impossible.

A small number of traits are influenced primarily by a single gene. Traits influenced mainly by one gene usually have predictable patterns of inheritance. However, most of the time even supposed "single-gene" traits are influenced by multiple genes, as in the case of eye color. And often times, a single gene can influence multiple traits. For example, some genes involved in eye color also influence hair and skin color.

Why do so many textbooks pretend that eyes come in just two colors, brown and blue? Eye color is influenced by two major genes and several minor genes. Variations in these genes determine whether your eyes are brown, blue, green, gold, hazel, greyish-blue, brown with green flecks, blue with a gold ring...you get the idea.

In rare cases, changes in DNA sequences can cause disease. The pattern of disease inheritance can be predictable or unpredictable, depending on whether the disease is influenced mainly by one gene or by several genes. See Genetic Disorders

It's not quite accurate to say that everyone inherits two copies of every gene. In most mammals, the X and Y sex chromosomes determine whether an individual is male or female. Females have two X chromosomes, and therefore two copies of every gene. Males, however, have one X and one Y chromosome. For genes that appear only on the X chromosome or only on the Y (some do appear on both), males inherit just one copy.

Other living things have sex chromosomes too. Birds and reptiles have Z and W sex chromosomes. Unlike with X and Y, males have two Z chromosomes, and females have one Z and one W. Some insects and a few mammals have only an X chromosome. Females have two copies and males have one. However, sex is not always determined by chromosomes. With alligators, crocodiles, and most turtles, it's egg incubation temperature. And some fish can change gender in response to cues from the environment. Sex determination happens in many different ways.

Traits that involve genes on the sex chromosomes have different inheritance patterns than non-sex-linked traits. Color-blindness and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, are linked to genes on the X chromosome. Both of these disorders are more common in males because they have just one X chromosome. They have no second allele to mask the effects of a defective gene.

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Genetic variation is important because when conditions change (food becomes scarce, environment changes), some individuals in a population will be more likely to have variations that will allow them to survive. Those who reproduce pass their genes to the next generation. Variation helps species survive, and it's the reason species change over time.

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Student Activity: How do Genes Determine Skin Color? 

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Student Activity: How do Genes Determine Skin Color? 

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Student Guided Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l_WEcCOoMF0YYPwaMY9Tc-KG8238qyfX/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106834096082613860784&rtpof=true&sd=true

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Edpuzzle video lesson. Make any video your lesson. Take a video and crop it, add your voice or embed questions at any point.

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Welcome to CK-12 Foundation | CK-12 Foundation

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Welcome to CK-12 Foundation | CK-12 Foundation

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Student Activity: Exploring Genetic Crosses

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Student Activity: Exploring Genetic Crosses

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Student Assignment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iz9zUtG65G_pEq_j9qkvLOvt6OcsuAmd23LUd-qAAmo/edit?usp=sharing

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Breed "pure" mice with known genotypes that exhibit specific fur colors, and learn how traits are passed on via dominant and recessive genes. Mice can be stored in cages for future breeding, and the statistics of fur color are reported every time a pair of mice breed. Punnett squares can be used to predict results.

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Breed "pure" mice with known genotypes that exhibit specific fur colors, and learn how traits are passed on via dominant and recessive genes. Mice can be stored in cages for future breeding, and the statistics of fur color are reported every time a pair of mice breed.

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Allele Shuffling [Internet]. Salt Lake City (UT): Genetic Science Learning Center; 2017 [cited 2021 Feb 12] Available from https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/evolution/allele

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Quizizz - The world's most engaging learning platform

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Find and create gamified quizzes, lessons, presentations, and flashcards for students, employees, and everyone else. Get started for free!

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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1. Describe the process of meiosis including the following terms:  diploid, haploid, cell divisions, gamete, crossing over.  Why is meiosis important to living organisms?

2. Explain why sexual reproduction results in genetically unique offspring.

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Student Activity: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eq_RzXDwsysxVCR7RHZGVW5aKIAxK7zILoT1lJLcrPo/edit?usp=sharing

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ExploreLearning : Get hands-on, minds-on in math and science

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Observe the effect of predators on a population of parrots with three possible genotypes. The initial percentages and fitness levels of each genotype can be set. Determine how initial fitness levels affect genotype and allele frequencies through several generations. Compare scenarios in which a domi…

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Summative: Protein Synthesis and Mutations

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Summative: Protein Synthesis and Mutations

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Version A: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1snSKChD4ZfrbMdj6-B9J7tulRjih1QjQ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106834096082613860784&rtpof=true&sd=true
Version B: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ph4R8Ox7k9Tr_AMPbjNe8ZCMkHH99W4P/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106834096082613860784&rtpof=true&sd=true

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CAST Sample LS4-3: Explain why there are no flies with short wings; What % of F2 generation is expected to be heterozygous for long wings; What are the genotypes of the parents in the F1 generation? 

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CAST Sample LS4-3: Explain why there are no flies with short wings; What % of F2 generation is expected to be heterozygous for long wings; What are the genotypes of the parents in the F1 generation? 

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Welcome to CK-12 Foundation | CK-12 Foundation

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Simulation: Natural Selection of Peppered Moths

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Simulation: Natural Selection of Peppered Moths

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Learn,Play and Explore by using interactive PLIX.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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CAST Sample LS3-2: Using the Punnett square provided, drag the correct parents that would be expected to produce approximately 50% homozygous brown and 50% heterozygous offspring

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CAST Sample LS3-2: Using the Punnett square provided, drag the correct parents that would be expected to produce approximately 50% homozygous brown and 50% heterozygous offspring

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.