CIBTs Building Blocks of Life Lego Lab

I found CIBTs Building Blocks of Life lab a couple of years ago, but hadn't found the time to look at it closely and prep the materials for it. You can access all of their files here. Since we ended our school year early last year due to COVID, I spent some time prepping for this lab. To my delight, my Honors Biology class was able to do this lab in person this year. 

The Substrate

For prepping this lab, I found the needed Legos for the lab kits with a quick trip to our local Lego store wall of Legos and then glued the substrates together for each lab group. I felt a little like Mr. Business in the Lego movie with the "Kragle", but I got past it. The Lego wall didn't have a couple of the specific pieces needed for the kit, so we improvised. 

It's hard to see, but this is 3 flat pieces stacked.

All the Legos for 5-6 lab groups fit in this little container.

Part of what drew me to this lab was bringing together the Central Dogma...DNA is the template for RNA is the template for proteins, mutations, and how a mutation may change the shape and often the function of an enzyme.

Besides collecting the needed Legos, I also converted the pdf student lab into a Google Doc so that my students could complete the written portion electronically.

A mutated enzyme

Students first used the instructions to put together the Lego enzymes from an un-mutated sequence.  Then they worked on reading the mutated sequences and translating them into new enzymes, trying to predict if their enzymes would function correctly. It was a very hands-on way of seeing the principle of form follows function.

One of the mutated enzymes

Here are all of the links to the converted Google Docs that I made for the lab.

CIBT Student Background Information

CIBT Building Blocks of Life Lab

CIBT Enzyme Worksheet Page