comments, suggestions, questions? mailto:thorn@pst.ciw.edu

Developmental Biology Lessons

Modeling

Jewel Reuter's Fish Embryology models (developed for high school). View this Microsoft powerpoint presentation

Super size cell models from Crayola.com (This is a free site, but you will need to register and make a password.)

Contour maps with DOGSTAILs Adapt this lesson on building contour maps from sections of clay models of a mountain (National Geographic Expeditions)

Use these candy cross sections connected to a slide from the Visible Human Project to help students

• (Fun) See where a serial cross section come from and what it looks like inside us at the level of our tummy and intestines http://www.carolynsclinic.f2s.com/crossSection.htm
• Even better! Visit this Science Museum of Minnesota site "Name that Candybar"

• Mathematically, a cross section is ...
• Lots more cross-sections from an online medical anatomy text
• Models and slides
• Chick embryo cross sections and here
• Frog embryo cross sections and here
• Fruit fly
• Starfish development
• Grain kernel x.s. (Remember, seeds are embryos) Rice grain ---
• 3-D (mouse) embryo atlas --- zoom and point and the anatomical terms appear with the location highlighted in color.

To differentiate instruction and enable the students to teach each other (and YOU!)

Adopt a...

Developing organism

Students adopt a different stage of development of a single organism (chick or frog or worm or fruitfly or human)

• fertilization
• cell divison
• morula
• blastocyst, etc.
• gastrulation
• formation of germ layers
• development of organ systems

• egg development (optional?)
• sperm development (optional?)

Students go online to conduct their research on these scientific sites, which have excellent microscopic images, better than were even available in college embryology courses.

Students print out Black and White images and then color in the germ layers. This works especially for older embryos that already have germ layers, Note that scientists can now color code particular cells by using tissue specific reporter genes (recombinant DNA technology applied to embryology, look here at the image of neuron-specific cells that stain red in a developing insect embryo because they express a neuron-specific gene).

Stage of development of fly, human, frog, chick mouse

Students develop compare contrast tables looking up the same stages of development in an organism

Neat images

• Expression of cell cycle gene in developing lymphocytes (immune cells)
• Facial development in mice
• Myosin (muscle protien) in developing fruitfly embryos
• Human embryo images from a fertility clinic
• Signals that organise the embryo

comments, suggestions, questions? mailto:thorn@pst.ciw.edu