Mutations Inquiry Lab

Middle School Inquiry Lab on Mutations

In this lab students will work through a fictional case study of the effects of a lab accident on a population of amphipods. They will be challenged to discover the mechanism by which a mutation affects the structure and function of an organism’s traits.

Each inquiry lab will contain an essential question that will drive the lesson and make students think. For this lesson, the essential question is:

• How do mutations affect an organism’s traits? Is an organism helped, hurt, or neither by a mutation?

BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MATERIALS LIST:

Students will begin the lab by reading the essential question and background information. This can be done individually, as lab groups, or as a whole class. If you consider lab groups, you also might include some type of whole class formative checks before digging into the lab.

Materials List:

• amphipod gene to protein decoder
• crayons/colored pencils (red, yellow, and one other color)

PROCEDURE:

This lab is designed to take place in three parts. In the first part, students are genome code breakers. Students will have to identify the gene that controls shell color. Next, students will have to use a protein structure decoder and build three protein structures based on the gene structure provided. Lastly, students will color in a diagram representing the color mutations in the amphipods. Once the coloring is complete, students will have to determine whether or not all mutations are harmful.

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING:

At this point in the lab, students will be checked for understanding by answering questions about their findings. Here are a few that come with the lab:

• How did the UV light affect the STRUCTURE (letters) of this gene?
• How did the change to the structure of the protein affect the function?

CONCLUSION

Students will go back to the essential question and write a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to conclude the lab. Once completed, students will reflect back on their learning by answering the following questions:

1. Will the new shell colors be passed on to the next generation of amphipods? Why or why not?
2. Do you think that mutations always change the protein that is created?

MODIFIED AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY VERSIONS

All of the Kesler Science inquiry labs come with three different modification levels. Each lab is differentiated using the icons below.

 

STANDARDS ALIGNMENT

NGSS: MS LS3-1 – Develop and use a model to describe why structural changes to genes (mutations) located on chromosomes may affect proteins and may result in harmful, beneficial, or neutral effects to the structure and function of the organism.