Students create four-legged walking robots and measure how far they travel across different types of surfaces. They design and create "shoes" to add to the robots' feet and observe the effect of their modifications on the net distance traveled across the various surface types. This activity illustrates how the specialized locomotive features of different species help them to survive or thrive in their habitat environments. The activity is best as an enrichment tool that follows a lesson that introduces the concept of biological adaptation to students.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Explain the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes in dominant and recessive gene systemsDevelop a Punnett square to calculate the expected proportions of genotypes and phenotypes in a monohybrid crossExplain the purpose and methods of a test crossIdentify non-Mendelian inheritance patterns such as incomplete dominance, codominance, recessive lethals, multiple alleles, and sex linkage

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Explain Mendel’s law of segregation and independent assortment in terms of genetics and the events of meiosisUse the forked-line method and the probability rules to calculate the probability of genotypes and phenotypes from multiple gene crossesExplain the effect of linkage and recombination on gamete genotypesExplain the phenotypic outcomes of epistatic effects between genes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the scientific reasons for the success of Mendel’s experimental workDescribe the expected outcomes of monohybrid crosses involving dominant and recessive allelesApply the sum and product rules to calculate probabilities

Studying the Fibonacci Sequence is our entry point for studying Heredity: Inheritance and variation of traits.

Since the discovery of the structure of the DNA double helix in 1953 by Watson and Crick, the information on detailed molecular structures of DNA and RNA, namely, the foundation of genetic material, has expanded rapidly. This discovery is the beginning of the "Big Bang" of molecular biology and biotechnology. In this seminar, students discuss, from a historical perspective and current developments, the importance of pursuing the detailed structural basis of genetic materials.

General Biology is intended to leave the student with an integrated view of the living world including the nature of sciences, evolution of biological organization, composition and organization of living substances, metabolism, control, reproduction, heredity and ecological relationships. This class meets the A.A. degree lab science requirement in the State of Washington.Login: guest_oclPassword: ocl

Students randomly select jelly beans (or other candy) that represent genes for several human traits such as tongue-rolling ability and eye color. Then, working in pairs (preferably of mixed gender), students randomly choose new pairs of jelly beans from those corresponding to their own genotypes. The new pairs are placed on toothpicks to represent the chromosomes of the couple's offspring. Finally, students compare genotypes and phenotypes of parents and offspring for all the "couples" in the class. In particular, they look to see if there are cases where parents and offspring share the exact same genotype and/or phenotype, and consider how the results would differ if they repeated the simulation using more than four traits.

Students will breed fruit flies through several generations and record their data using mathematical models in order to demonstrate the inheritance of trait variations.

In a class discussion format, the teacher presents background information about basic human genetics. The number of chromosomes in both body cells and egg and sperm cells is covered, as well as the concept of dominant and recessive alleles. Students determine whether or not they possess the dominant allele for the tongue-rolling gene as an example.