{"id":2937,"date":"2011-02-26T21:11:10","date_gmt":"2011-02-27T03:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=2937"},"modified":"2011-02-26T21:11:10","modified_gmt":"2011-02-27T03:11:10","slug":"i-teach-evolution-do-you-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=2937","title":{"rendered":"I Teach Evolution, Do You? – Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Two\u00a0weeks ago, I\u00a0was struck by the information on\u00a0biology teachers that\u00a0I read in the article\u00a0On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan<\/a>\u00a0(duplicate post<\/a> that you don\u2019t have to login in to read) by Nicholas Bakalar.\u00a0 At that time, I decided that I would share some of my thoughts and lessons that I used to teach evolution in my freshman Biology course.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This particular lesson is the second of a series of activities that was\u00a0conducted at the very end of the school year at the end of my unit on genetics after having covered standard Mendelian genetics and content associated with inheritance in humans.<\/p>\n

The Biology of Race and Inequality<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Lesson 1<\/strong>\u00a0– Comparing Chimpanzees using mtDNA Sequences<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(previous post)<\/p>\n

Lesson 2 – Comparing Humans using mtDNA Sequences<\/strong><\/p>\n

Background<\/strong> \u2013 In the early summer of 2002, I attended a Dolan DNA Learning Center<\/a> workshop at the Stowers Institute <\/a>where a group of biology instructors were introduced to one wet lab and a number of bioinformatics activities associated with\u00a0their new educational program called Genetic Origins<\/a>.\u00a0 Scott Bronson and Ewe Hilgert ran the workshop that specifically\u00a0introduced us to the study of\u00a0mitochondrial (mt) DNA and Alu genomic elements.<\/p>\n

Objective<\/strong>– For students to apply what they learned in the previous activitiy\u00a0on\u00a0comparing chimpanzee mtDNA seqeunces to the\u00a0analysis to human mtDNA sequences, and to realize that mtDNA comparisons do not support the concept of\u00a0distinct human races.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because the\u00a0previous activity demonstrated that mtDNA sequences were supportive of their being\u00a0geographic subspecies of chimpanzees, many students will assume that the data for human mtDNA sequences will be just as supportive of geographic categorization of humans into races\u00a0(they may even remember that Linneaus had segregated humans into distinct\u00a0categories<\/a>\u00a0as well, although I would not reminded them of this directly).\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the end, students\u00a0should notice that the human mtDNA data is different than the chimpanzee mtDNA data, in that there is more variation within<\/strong><\/em> groups of humans than there is between<\/strong><\/em> those same groups.\u00a0 In chimps there is significantly more variation between groups than within groups.\u00a0 The main question that arises from this observation, is “Why is this so?”<\/p>\n

Introducing the Activity<\/strong>\u00a0– I do little introduction for this activity.\u00a0 Since they would have just complete the comparison of chimpanzee mtDNA sequences, they know what to do and appreciate being allow to just get started.<\/p>\n