Electrophoresis and the Relationships and Biodiversity Lab for the Regents Exam

I had just begun our unit on Genetics, Biotechnology, and Decision Making in Honors Biology when school closed and we transitioned to home learning via Zoom. The labs I do for this unit did not transition well to having students complete them at home.

As we got closer to the time that we would have gone over electrophoresis and done the Relationships and Biodiversity Lab (required to be completed for the New York Living Environment Regents Exam) I felt like I needed to put something together so that my students could get an idea of how electrophoresis works and to somehow do the lab. Of course, since then the June Regents exam has been canceled, but I actually like this lab and am glad my students had a chance to go through it.

The first activity that we did was designed to give them a "hands-on" feel for electrophoresis. I lead them through it with this google slides show. After students made their paper DNA sequence and cut them with their restriction enzyme, I asked students to count their base pairs and use the annotate feature in zoom to draw their DNA bands where they belong. Everyone had their initials over one of the wells, so they knew where to draw their bands. I loved how the electrophoresis gel looked when they finished annotating.

The next day we tackled the Relationships and Biodiversity Lab. Students had access to the NY lab in google doc format through Google Classroom and I also shared this Google Slides presentation with them to walk them through each of the 7 tests on the lab. Some of the slides I copied from other teachers' presentations, I found a video on YouTube of a teacher explaining the paper chromatography test, and one day that I was allowed into the building for 15 minutes, I made a video of the enzyme test.

Students asked plenty of questions, but once they were in their breakout rooms, they got to work. I popped into the rooms to check on them and answered a few more questions, mainly about how to mark the DNA bands in the lab. They did a great job with them. Of course, it wasn't as fun as doing it in person, but I think students got a picture of the concepts that the lab hits on.