Bad luck at a Potluck: Studying Shigellosis and Food Safety
June 30th, 2018, Charlotte, NC: A happy potluck birthday lunch. 100 guests invited to share a homemade dish to complement the only store bought item on the menu, the birthday cake. July 2nd 2018: Two days later, 40 guests are stricken with intense abdominal cramps,...
Teaching Evolution? Koala Genome Reveals Unique Adaptations
Bitter taste receptors help an iconic mammal survive on a toxic diet In your classroom, you may have tasted PTC paper while learning about genetics and evolution. PTC is a bitter compound that some people can taste, and some people cannot. The difference is linked to...
Genetic Editing in Pop Culture
Header image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures With Comic-Con in town and costumed characters taking over Downtown San Diego, we thought it might be a good time to examine biotech in pop culture, and how pop culture can be used to engage students with science. Classic...
Beyond Biotech- the STEM Behind MiniOne Electrophoresis
Are you looking for classroom activities that will bring together science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in one integrated experience? The solution could be at your fingertips – gel electrophoresis! Electrophoresis typically enters the biology...
Art Project Teaches Students How to Use a Pipette
Download Activity Sheet as Word Document Download Activity Sheet as PDF This is a guest post courtesy of Mr. Andrew Faiz, a biology teacher at East Boston High School. A big thank you to Mr. Faiz for this wonderful blog post, and for sharing your fun, practical class...
Lettuce Investigate! Studying Foodborne Outbreaks in the Lab
Beginning in April 2018, a foodborne outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O157:H7 caused a nationwide alert about tainted greens. Cases first appeared in Canada and ultimately spread to 32 US states. According to the last Centers for Disease Control and...
Lambda Phage: A Classic Model Keeps Evolving
Scientists have used bacteriophage lambda (lambda phage) to reveal the molecular secrets of life since the 1950s. When you teach your students about restriction enzymes, recombinant DNA, or gene regulation, you are drawing on decades of basic molecular biology...
Storing Casted Electrophoresis Gels – a Teacher Guest Blog
Hello! I’m Diane, an AP Biology teacher who attended a recent MiniOne workshop in New Jersey, and I’d like to share an interesting revelation I had while working with my MiniOne DNA Electrophoresis System in my classroom: it’s possible to store...MiniOne PCR System
