Y13's Animate CRISPR Delivery to Cells

Year 13 has been learning about how humans manipulate genetic transfer in other organisms. In other words - how have humans managed to change the genes of species that they have found most useful? These genetic manipulations started thousands of years ago with the selective breeding of farm and domesticated animals such as goats and dogs and has continued to advance.

Now we're at a stage of technological capability that scientists can 'knock out' or 'switch off' a SINGLE gene they're interested in with massive precision, OR even insert or 'knock in' a new / healthy copy of a gene! This is particularly interesting in terms of healthcare - fixing a disease caused by a single gene by replacing the altered copy with a healthy version!

Year 13 first learnt about how CRISPR (a recent gene editing technology) works before they attended a workshop about CRISPR's potential for use in New Zealand's healthcare system.

Gene editing in Healthcare by The Royal Society Te Aparangi

The Y13's before going into the workshop.

Lonise, Clearissa and Sharon.

A few days after the workshop we had a chat about things we had understood, didn't quite understand, and questions we (myself included!) were a bit shy to ask. We fired off a quick email to one of the scientists who were at the workshop, and were pleasantly surprised when he replied! 

Here's the link to his responses to our questions.

The first two questions we had were about how scientists actually deliver CRISPR into cells so that it could manipulate the genome in cells, such as embryos - or whole organisms. 

The scientist explained that DNA that contains the instructions to build CRISPR's Cas9 enzyme and gRNA and possibly a template can be packaged up and delivered into a cell via a virus or nanoliposomes. Embryos can have the DNA for CRISPR injected directly into them along with sperm, before fertilisation. 

Year 13 spent their double period today animating one of the three delivery methods with play-doh. 

The followup activity for this is to have students present their animation verbally to the class, or for me to combine all of these FANTASTIC animations into a short video and then have students practice writing descriptions of what they observe. 
Our school and cluster goal is to improve the literacy of our students. I'm hoping that this activity scaffolds confidence in writing scientific explanations. 

Play-doh Chloroplasts With Year 12

Today in Y12 biology our lesson was in two parts; learning about the structure of a chloroplast first, followed by learning the stages of photosynthesis. 

To help with learning how to draw and label a chloroplast we made play-doh models of them, using different colours to represent different structures.

For all of the models (bar one) green is used to represent the thylakoid discs stacked into granum (the plural for these is grana), because the thylakoid discs are where chlorophyll is found. Chlorophyll is the pigment responsible for absorbing red and blue wavelengths of light for energy and reflecting back green wavelengths, which gives plants their green colour.

Pink: outer membrane. Yellow: inner membrane: Red: stroma. Green: thylakoid stacks in grana. White: lamellae.

Yellow: outer membrane. White: inner membrane: Pink: stroma. Green: thylakoid stacks in grana and lamellae joining them.

Pink: outer membrane. Red: inner membrane: White: stroma. Green: thylakoid stacks in grana.

Pink: outer membrane. Green layer: inner membrane: Yellow: stroma. Red: ribosomes. Green: thylakoid stacks in grana.

Yellow: outer membrane.  Absent: inner membrane: Blue: stroma. Green: thylakoid stacks in grana.

Green: outer membrane. Red: inner membrane: Yellow: stroma. Pink: thylakoid stacks in grana.

Mikayla made an adorable miniature model.

Priscilla with her chloroplast.

Yellow: outer membrane. White: inner membrane: Red: stroma. Green: thylakoid stacks in grana.

After the class was comfortable with the structures inside a chloroplast they were ready to move on and learn about how photosynthesis happens in two of these structures; the thylakoids and the stroma. 

Students will have to work hard filing this away in their long term memory in a way that makes sense to them; drawing diagrams of the process, explaining it out loud, teaching others, or writing the story of photosynthesis in their own words. This is one of those concepts where I can be around to answer questions but I can't physically MAKE students learn it, and when it becomes tricky they need the resilience to wrestle on! 

Year 12 Mutation Maltesers Game

Year 12 Bio recently played a game to illustrate how mutations enter the gene pool and change in frequency, and how mutations can be helpful, harmful or neutral (and this can change if the environment changes!)

Equipment needed for this game: 

teaspoons

tablespoons

forks

plastic forks with the middle prongs removed

bowls

shot glasses

maltesers

In this game, students 'live' in different populations at tables around the room. These populations all have a similar niche and are trying to gain access to the same resource - maltesers. These maltesers are found in bowls on a table in the middle of the room.

The game progresses through several rounds or 'generations.'

In the first round, each group has the same adaptation for gathering their resource - plastic forks. Students needed to gather a resource and keep it balanced all the way back to their table, where they could deposit the resource and pass on the fork to the next person. Each group roughly gathered the same amount of maltesers, and they all survived to produce the next generation.

In the next generation one of the populations had a mutation - they lost the middle prongs of their fork! We played another round, and the group missing the middle prongs were unable to gather any maltesers, because the gap in the middle was too big! 

Alas, this was a harmful mutation. It didn't enter the gene pool of the overall population because it failed to help them gain enough resources to survive, and unfortunately that group couldn't pass their genes or alleles onto the next generation. 

(We let the group come back in with a normal fork though, so they could keep playing).

The next generation had another mutation - their adaptation to help them gather was a tablespoon! This turned out to be a helpful mutation, as it was easier to balance and they could gather resources faster than the other groups. 

As they were more successful, in the next generation more groups had tablespoons, as the helpful allele became more frequent in the gene pool.

After a few tablespoon generations another mutation occurred - a teaspoon! I thought this mutation would also be harmful but it turned out to be neutral, as having a smaller spoon didn't seem to affect the ability to balance a malteser in it. 

However!!! Suddenly the environment changed!!

The bowls of maltesers became shot glasses of maltesers. Suddenly having a smaller teaspoon was an advantage in the new environment, as the teaspoon adaptation was too large to get into the bottom of the shot glass. 

The group with the smaller teaspoon SHOULD have had much greater access to maltesers and the next generation should have had a lot greater frequency of alleles for smaller teaspoons. 

However, my class are resourceful and very competitive, and the tablespoon groups quickly worked out that they could use the handle of the tablespoon to scoop out maltesers! So that point was sort of lost, but the rest of the game was good to illustrate how mutations arise and change in frequency in populations over generations, depending on whether they help or harm the organisms' ability to survive or reproduce in their environment.

Mutations in the story:

Fork (at the start)

Fork with prongs missing (harmful, gap too wide for maltesers)

Tablespoon (helpful - easier to balance than fork)

Teaspoon (neutral - turned out to be no different from table spoon)

Change of environment to shot glass (teaspoon advantage now to fit in the glass)

Charades with Y13 on the Last Day of Term

It was the last day of Term 3, and the last day with our student teacher Miss Graaf... 

What should we do! Definitely learning, but FUN, silly learning! 

John, Kitana, Rapture and Norman had been studying Plant and Animal Responses with Miss Graaf for 4 weeks, so they became group leaders on this day, and went over key ideas and vocabulary from the topic with the other students in the class. 

At the end of our lesson we played charades, acting out the vocabulary in pairs and trying to guess what was being shown. Having pairs meant that students had to discuss a strategy before acting it out and make sure both of them knew what the word was and what to do to act it. 

I have sooo many good videos but I'm struggling to get them off my old Galaxy S2 and onto my Mac.. the two machines are not friends :( 

Here is the short video, unfortunately it only includes two rounds of charades! 

Year 9 Sheep Heart Dissections

My year 9 classes finally got the chance to dissect pig and sheep hearts. 

9KEm and 9TMn got to do it as part of the new 'Me, Myself and My Environment' unit, and even though we have run out of time to finish that unit we didn't want 9PLa, 9PTt or 9RTd missing out on this fun and practical learning experience!

We had a look at the aorta, as well as the left and right atria, ventricles and chordae tendineae.

Students were really good at remembering which side of the heart is bigger and has thicker walls of muscle, and explaining WHY!  (The left side is bigger and more muscular because it pumps blood around the whole body, while the right side only pumps blood out to the lungs and back).

Here is the video of their dissections - listen carefully as James' from 9RTd gives an explanation halfway through:

Rotoroa Island Sanctuary

At the end of Term 1 the Year 12 and 13 biology students from Tamaki College were lucky enough to go on a field trip to Rotoroa Island. 

This amazing island used to be a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, but nowadays it is a newly established conservation site for native New Zealand wildlife. Read on to find out what the trip had in store for our students!

Students enjoyed the ferry trip over, especially using binoculars to look at gulls and blue penguins (korora) and working together to recreate that iconic scene from Titanic... Thankfully the ferry didn't meet the same fate as the Titanic, and we were able to get our first glimpse of the island. 

Once we were all on Rotoroa students walked to the 1860's schoolhouse - the road provided a really nice view of the island we would spend our day exploring! Our guide Greg then gave an honest talk about the realities of keeping Rotoroa pest-free. Students learned about the many different ways to trap and humanely kill possums, stoats, rats and weasels that can reach the island. 

Once the talk had finished, Greg produced some possum, stoat and ferret skins.  At first the students were grossed-out but then curiosity prevailed! They enjoyed taking selfies with the skins, passing them to each other and asking Greg lots of questions. After the talk 5 students said they would be happy to come and share what they learned about pest control with some of my Year 9 classes!

After morning tea we split into two groups and off we went to help Greg with some research. Students took turns setting up simple tubes with banana and pieces of paper that had a strip of ink down the middle. The banana tempts animals into the tube and the ink ensures animals leave prints all over the paper as they walk. Researchers can then use their knowledge of prints to tell which animal it was, whether it is a pest, and whether they should lay traps. Greg also showed us how watery gum from Harakeke flax can act as a natural second-skin to help heal burns and eczema. 

We then did a lot of walking (including up a huge hill) with Greg stopping along the way to show us different traps, a huge weta, traditional Maori plant uses, how to use a tracking radio, and letting students use tablets to help identify different animal prints. 

After lunch students got to use the radio tracker to find soft-toy animals that had transmitters on them (the toys had to be hidden off the ground or the cheeky Weka would have run off with them), practice banding bird-legs and using binoculars to read band patterns from a distance. 

It was a big day - lots of sun, lots of walking, lots of learning - and quite a few of the students fell asleep on the way home! I hope they enjoyed themselves as much as I did and are looking forward to their next trip to Tiritiri Matangi! 

Year 11 Streaking and Culturing Bacteria

On Friday the Year 11 Science class took samples off surfaces around our classroom. 

Some students took samples off bench tops, others off keyboards or laptop screens, and some even decided to test the bacteria in their hair or on their hands. 

We wanted to test the effect of temperature on bacterial growth, so we placed a third of the plates in the fridge where it was cold, left a third at room temperature inside the Science room and placed a third inside a warm incubator. 

It is pretty clear from looking at the results which temperature these bacteria prefer to grow at! 

Take a look at the (pretty cool and gross) samples that grew over the weekend! 

This sample was placed in a fridge

This sample was left at room temperature

This sample was placed in a warm incubator

All plates were sealed with clear tape and students were instructed not to open them during class. Plates were incubated at a temperature lower than human body temperature.

Year 12 Bio Trip to Long Bay

Yesterday Mr Major's Year 12 biology class went on a field trip to Long Bay to look for patterns and bands of living creatures on the rocky shore. 

I had a van full of lovely students who seemed to enjoy singing R Kelly and Akon... They also encouraged both me and the van as we chugged slowly up the Stanley Street motorway onramp! 

Once we arrived safe and sound at Long Bay groups of students placed quadrats along transect lines that were roughly 40m long! Everyone had to work quickly to complete the quadrats closest to the low tide mark before the tide came in and tried to soak their shoes! 

Students collecting data on Long Bay beach

It was a very sunny day and the students worked hard in the heat to cover the whole shore and accurately record the organisms living on it. 

Once all the data had been gathered we had a brief lunch in the shade. The boys were ambushed by ducks and we decided it was time to move on! 

Photo created using the Photo Grid app - boys being ambushed by ducks!

Next on the agenda was Awaruku Bush in Torbay. Everyone had to spray their shoes on the way in and out to protect Kauri from the fungus Phytophthora taxon Agathis that is transmitted by humans. 

Once we were inside the bush Mr Major taught everyone about Kauri trees, the traditional medicinal properties of Kawakawa leaves and also possibly pointed out a Kereru! 

Students walking in Awaruku Bush and learning about Kauri trees.

We finished the day with some well-earned soft serve ice cream in McDonald's and I quizzed students about their learning for the day...

Students were easily able to discuss how the type of organisms changed from high tide to low tide, and how factors such as evaporation, salt concentration, sun, predators and water played a part in the distribution of organisms at the beach! 

Lots of learning, duck attacks, and ice cream - a successful day all round :)