This curriculum covers all of the material outlined by the College Board as necessary to prepare students to pass the AP Biology exam. This course is designed to acquaint you with the general concepts of life including reproduction, balance in nature, and the nature of living things. You will focus on three broad sections that align with the goals for the AP exam: Molecules and Cells, Heredity and Evolution, and Organisms and Populations.

Relevant material from MIT's introductory courses to support students as they study and educators as they teach the AP Biology curriculum.

This annotated slideshow adapted from KET's Electronic Field Trip to the Forest illustrates how blight decimated the American chestnut tree and the methods scientists use to identify and pollinate the remaining trees to create blight-resistant trees.

Unlike most population genetics labs, which involve simulations with beans or beads, this lab provides an opportunity to study a population of living organisms. Using Bar and wild-type Drosophila, students compare allele and genotype frequencies to Hardy-Weinberg expectations. Because the Bar mutation in Drosophila is sex-linked and incompletely dominant, students can determine the exact genotype of a fly from its phenotype. These data are evaluated to determine which (if any) of the five Hardy-Weinberg assumptions have been violated. This real-data approach allows students to appreciate the value of this null model and helps the instructor to discover and correct students' misunderstandings of the model.

This resource provides detailed technical protocols, background information for students, and instructors notes for running laboratory exercises on bacterial transformation and conjugation.

This laboratory investigates one form of genetic recombination in bacteria. This process, called conjugation, occurs when one bacteria transfers DNA to another bacteria. Two different strains of Escherichia coli are used: an Hfr strain with the F factor integrated into the bacterial chromosome acting as the donor, and an F-strain lacking the fertility factor acting as a recipient. The F-strain is auxotrophic for certain genetic markers and the ordered transfer of markers from the Hfr strain to the F-strain is used to map gene locations on the bacterial chromosome.

This experiment is performed in a first year Introductory Biology course and has been used in a Genetics and Biochemistry course.

Used in conjunction with lecture material to illustrate genetic mapping.

This educational journal article addresses the implementation of bioinformatics in the classroom. The author explains how bioinformatics could play a key role for science students pursuing higher education, foster inquiry learning of content that has often been taught in a dry manner, provide the thread that ties classes together, improve biology teaching, enhance the learning of biotech issues and ethics, expose students to real-world science, and significantly help to reform biology teaching and improve learning. The article includes links to bioinformatics resources, information about how to get involved in bioinformatics, and a glossary of terms.

An investigative laboratory developed for the introductory biology curriculum using transgenic plants is presented in this chapter. The transgenic Arabidopsis plants we use contain the GUS reporter gene under the control of the cor15a gene promoter, which responds to cold stress. Following induction by cold or other environmental signals, the gusA gene will respond by producing the enzyme beta-glucuronidase (GUS). When plant tissue is incubated with the chromogenic substrate X-gluc, those tissues that produce GUS turn blue. Using investigative experiments, students monitor both the physiological response of plants to these signals, as well as the induction of gene activity as reflected by GUS activity. The GUS assay is highly visible, safe for the undergraduate laboratory, easy to conduct, and relatively inexpensive. Blue Plants, developed at Purdue University with support from NSF-DUE grant #9354721, are one of the Research Link 2000 systems (http://www.researchlink.ferris.edu).

Molecular models of DNA, protein (alpha-helix and beta-pleated sheet), and lipids are built to scale. With a minimum of scientific jargon, these laboratory exercises effectively display the important aspects of three-dimensional shape and spatial orientation that are poorly presented in textbook illustrations and demonstrate how the shape of molecules and weak chemical associations like hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic/hydrophilic interactions combine to form the macromolecular associations fundamental to living cells.

Case It! is an NSF-sponsored project to promote collaborative case-based learning in biology education worldwide. This paper describes the latest version of the Case It! simulation software (DNA gel electrophoresis, Southern blotting, and PCR). Students use these open-ended molecular biology computer simulations to analyze case studies involving genetic diseases, then discuss results with their peers at other institutions via web-based "poster sessions." They also use Case It! software to gather background information, analyze DNA and protein sequences, then create web-page posters and discuss them via a web editor /conferencing system at the Case It! web site (http://www.uwrf.edu/caseit/caseit.html).

DNA microarrays are influencing many areas of biology. DNA microarrays allow investigators to measure simultaneously the activity of every gene in a genome. This paper provides the reader with background information, a set of interactive questions, and most importantly, free software (MAGIC Tool) for use in the undergraduate curriculum. MAGIC Tool (www.bio.davidson.edu/MAGIC) resources allow the user to understand how DNA microarray data are analyzed by providing raw data, instructions, mathematical supplements, and free software that works on all computer platforms. MAGIC Tool facilitates the incorporation of microarrays into any upper level biology course.

Human DNA profiling has applications in paternity testing and forensics. This exercise provides students the opportunity to gain first-hand experience with procedures that are currently used to extract DNA from their own cells, quantify the DNA in the extract, perform a multiplex PCR amplification of several loci used in forensic analysis, and determine their own genotype at those loci. In addition, methods for analyzing results relative to existing population databases will be presented. The exercise is normally presented in the context of a laboratory course in Forensic DNA Analysis that presents students with a variety of techniques that have been and/or continue to be employed in forensic laboratories.

This workshop, which is half wet lab and half Internet lab, uses DNA sequences to examine the relatedness of different species. DNA from several insect and/or fish species are compared. This chapter includes instructions for extracting DNA from gels and making PCR products. We prepare PCR products to send to a computerized automated sequencing facility. (No radioisotopes are used in this sequencing!) We recover sequence from the facility over the Web as four-color graphics on a computer screen and as text. We make pair-wise DNA sequence comparisons between species with BLAST2 and multi-species comparisons with MultAlin. We see substitutions, insertions, and deletions. Then we make a distance-based evolutionary tree with GeneBee.

A laboratory exercise to use look at population genetics using seedlings from several population of a perennial herb, cellulose acetate protein electrophoresis and the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium Theory.

In this series of guided inquiry activities, students explore how organisms adapt to their environments through changes in their genetic codes. The learner will: create make-believe creatures and environments that have specific characteristics; rate the success of each creature in a randomly assigned environment by examining which of the creature's characteristics help, hinder, or have no effect on the creature's success in each environment; write the genetic code for their creatures from a list of fictitious genetic codes; apply his/her knowledge of genetic codes and environments to engineer new creatures that could survive in various extreme environments within our solar system.

A laboratory exercise to introduce students to experimental design and gene regulation.

One of the most important factors in the success of undergraduate biology laboratories rests with the instructors, often undergraduate or graduate students, who teach them. This ABLE 2000 workshop, which continued a session presented at ABLE 1999, focused on the theme "teaching effectively in the laboratory." Topics included preparation, organization, supervision of group work, and involvement of students in discussion. In addition to presentations by the workshop organizers, participants engaged in lively discussion of their own experiences and methods.