Digging Deeper

This section of the course could be considered the core. Hopefully you have mastered the material in the previous two sections and are able to really start understanding deeply how we have ended up with the great diversity of populations and species we have today. We will start with Chapter 6 which focuses on questions like, how do we see the frequencies of genes change in populations over time? What are the forces that can cause this change? We will then jump to Chapter 10, a great chapter with lots of examples of Natural Selection. We will read parts of Chapter 7 which focuses on how we approach and understand complex traits where phenotypes are a function of many genes as well as the environment. We will only read parts of Chapter 8. Chapter 8 focuses on how we build phylogenetic trees and connects closely with our MEGA labs which we will tackle at the end of the semester in lab.

Week of of March 24th (Bacteria Plating, Prof Cole will Clear Fly Vials, Greenhouse Phylogenies, Water Samples Design)

  • WED- CH 6 The Ways of Change, Introduction
  • FRI- CH 6 The Ways of Change, (Reading Guide Due for first part of CH 6-In Google Classroom)

☀️Week of March 31st (basically first week of April) SPRING BREAK☀️

Week of April 7th (Lab Measure Final Plates Bacterial Selection,  Plate Water Samples, Pop. Gen Simulations, Count Bristles on Flies for second generation)

  • MON- CH 6 The Ways of Change
  • WED-CH 6 The Ways of Change, (Reading Guide Due for second part of CH 6-In Google Classroom)
  • FRI- CH 10 Natural Selection, Watch…Grant’s Finch Research, Check out…Mouse Games (Reading Guide Due for CH 10-In Google Classroom)

Week of April 14th (Lab Analyze Water Samples, Protist Safari, Protist MEGA, Greenhouse MEGA)

  • MON- CH 10
  • WED- CH 7 Beyond Alleles (parts) (Reading Guide Due for CH 7-In Google Classroom)  Bear “Breeders Eqn” worksheet
  • FRI- CH 8 History in our Genes (parts) (Reading Guide Due for CH 8-In Google Classroom)

Week of April 21st (Lab Data Analysis-use existing data- for Lab Report-bacterial selection, environmental water, fly selection)

  • MON- CH 8 History in our Genes Watch… The Genes We Lost PBS 
  • WED- EXAM
  • If you have questions that you want clarification on, put them in this Google Slide Show and I will respond!
  • Don’t forget to complete your Exam Preparation Assignment by Monday night in Google Classroom.

Powerpoints from class will go here…

Practice HW assignments are here..

Keys for HW and Bear Breeders Eqn assignments…

Do review…

  • Difference between genetic drift and gene flow-students always get these mixed up!
  • That there are many causes of evolution-one of which is natural selection (see great video below)
  • How to USE Hardy Weinberg-are you comfortable thinking at the population level? Are you comfortable with the calculations to determine if a population is in HW? Or if individuals in a population experience selection against certain genotypes (like when you kill off some individuals and recalculate new allele frequencies and expected genotype frequencies in the next generation).
  • The “stories” and understand them. Ask yourself whether you could apply these examples to a new unique scenario and whether you would be able to justify your response based on those examples.
  • Be comfortable adding examples/details/evidence/justifications to your understanding of topics. (FYI…At this time of year we are conducting interviews with seniors who are applying to med schools because we write them a letter to go with their application. They respond “generically” to a question, but the best respondents are those that answer and then support and illustrate their response with a specific EXAMPLE based on their experiences. We keep having to remind them to do that! You should get into that habit too!)

Resources..(for fun-but will deepen your understanding and help you remember stories)

Other resources…

https://untamedscience.com/biology/evolution/molecular-clock/

  • Excellent video review! (We will mainly focus on genetic drift and natural selection as drivers of evolution but this does a good job of filling out mutation, gene flow, nonrandom mating.)

Other fun readings…