The Botanical Garden - A Tool to Teach systematics, Physiology and a Lot More

Abstract:: The UBC Botanical Garden will be used to demonstrate the wide range of possibilities for teaching using materials that are available in situ or freshly collected. An exercise in general systematics will use materials from the British Columbia Native Garden; the uses of plants as chemical sources will be examined with materials from the Physick Garden; the diversity of morphology will be examined using plants from the Food Garden; environmental and physiological adaptations will be seen in the Alpine Garden plants.

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DNA Sequencing Used to Illustrate Mutations and Evolution

Abstract:: 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.

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Abstract:: In modern systematics, both morphological features and DNA or amino acid sequences are used to determine phylogenetic relationships. This two-week exercise demonstrates two methods used by systematists to create phylogenetic trees. In the first week students score morphological features of fictional and real organisms, create data matrices showing number of synapomorphies, and then use the matrices to draw phylogenetic trees. In the second week they use Bio Workbench, an online bioinformatics software package, to create phylogenetic trees based on nucleotide or amino acid sequences. Students learn how modern systematics helps answer questions about ecology, evolution, and behavior.

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Abstract:: This workshop demonstrates on-line use of the national electronic bulletin board, complete with electronic mail started in 1987 by the National Association of Biology Teachers. Once on-line, 14 special interest areas are available, such as AP- Biology, magazine and book reviews, ABT Journal, NABT membership services, question and answer forum, software reviews, and swap/sale of used equipment. Also available for downloading onto your computer are extensive files of labs, graphics, and handouts. Discussions of this and other databases will emphasize the power of these new professional communication tools. Note: This workshop is not included in the published proceedings volume because it was not submitted by the author.