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Collaborative Research on Sustainability

Toward a Sustainable Agriculture
Module II Field Crops
Module II Section E Activities

Module II Section E Activities

Activities for Module II, Corn, Beans, and Burgers

Activities for Module II, Section E. GMOs: Boon, Bane, or In-between?

Contents

GMO activity 1. Claims and Counter-claims. Will GMOs Feed the World or Are They Frankenfoods?

Part 1: What Have You Heard?

Purpose: Find out how much information students have absorbed from news stories and advertisements. Students will get an overview of the range of claims made about GMOs by different groups.

Advance preparation: Have a place such as a flip chart or board to record the information. Have a page or column for each category.

Estimated time: 10 minutes,

There has been a lot of publicity about GE foods. Ask students to list what they have heard about:

  • The benefits of GE crops
  • The problems with GE crops
  • Who is in favor of GE crops, and why
  • Who is opposed to GE crops, and why
  • And finally, if they can remember, where have they heard or read these things?

Stress that you are just looking to find out what they have heard. They need not necessarily have confidence in the claims. Write down the answers on a flip chart or overhead, and save them for Part 2 of the activity, which should be done after the students have learned the material in the unit.

Activity 1, Part 2

Have the class create its own table like the Claims and Counterclaims table, using the claims related by students in Part 1 of this activity, and the material students have learned in this section.

GMO Activity 2. Modeling Natural Selection

Purpose: This activity is designed to give students a hands-on demonstration of how genetics and natural selection can function at the population level, and in particular how resistance to pesticides (including Bt in GE crops) can develop.

Advance preparation: Students should already be familiar with basic concepts of dominant and recessive traits and how gene combinations work at the individual organism level. You will need something to represent two different alleles in a population, such as two different colors of dry beans.

Estimated time: 30 to 45 minutes.

1) NATURAL SELECTION WITH A LETHAL ALLELE:

  1. Divide the class into small groups. Have each group do the following:
  2. Start out with .50 B : .50 b allele frequency. Use 100 beans to make the gene pool (50 of each color to represent the two alleles). Make 50 “babies” by randomly picking 2 alleles (beans) from the pool. Record their gene combinations. The gene combination of bb is lethal.
  3. Based on your results, calculate the (surviving) allele frequency in the next generation. Count out a new set of 100 beans that reflects the adjusted allele frequency. Make another 50 “babies” and record their gene combinations. Do 5 generations this way.
  4. Make a graph showing the change in allele frequency over time. Show both alleles.
  5. Answer these questions:
    • What is the overall trend for the frequency of each allele?
    • How do the babies of the 5 th generation look? (How many of each type?)
    • What happened to the b allele? Why?
    • Will the b ever disappear from the population? Why/why not?
    • Describe the role of the heterozygotes in the population.

2) NATURAL SELECTION WITH AN ALLELE CONFERRING RESISTANCE:

  1. Start out with .95 B : .05 b allele frequency. Use 100 beans to make the gene pool. The gene combination of BB cannot live in the presence of the toxin. All of the Bb individuals will become sick from the toxin, but 25% of them will live long enough to reproduce. Individuals with bb can tolerate the toxin with no problems. Make 50 babies, record their gene combinations.
  2. Based on your results, calculate the (surviving) allele frequency in the next generation. Count out a new set of 100 beans to reflect the adjusted allele frequency. Make another 50 babies and record their gene combinations. Do 5 generations this way.
  3. Make a graph showing the change in allele frequency over time. Show both alleles.
  4. Answer these questions:
    • What is the overall trend for the frequency of each allele?
    • Can the 5 th generation live with the toxin?
    • What happened to the B allele? Why?
    • How fast does resistance to the toxin develop?
    • Would it matter if the less well adapted allele is dominant or recessive? Explain.
    • What are the real world implications of this exercise?

Note: Normally students would do exercise 1 first and then exercise 2. To save time, you may wish to divide the class into two sets and have some groups model situation 1 at the same time the other groups are doing Situation 2. Leave some time for the groups to compare notes.

Activity 3: Who Cares About Intellectual Property?

Purpose: to help students understand how intellectual property law affects them, how difficult the issues are to balance, and why intellectual property is an issue for the sustainability of GMOs.

Advance preparation: print out and read Who Owns Genes? background discussion.

Estimated time: 10 to 30 minutes (depending on how many of the discussion questions the class addresses)

1) Ask students how many of them know people who have “stolen” intellectual property.

2) Help students brainstorm a list of intellectual property “crimes” they or their acquaintances may have committed.

Examples include

  • Copying a software program onto another computer
  • Downloading songs from the original Napster or a similar file-sharing program
  • Compiling a cd of favorite tunes and giving it to a friend
  • Sending a friend a poem without citing the author and the source where you found it
  • Using someone else’s words without attributing them properly (for example copying – something from a book or the web for a school paper)
  • Copying a DVD

3) Invite students to consider and discuss one or more of the following questions about intellectual property.

  • Should these activities be illegal? Why? Why not?
  • How can software and movie companies get repaid for the costs of developing their programs if copying is allowed?
  • Since you can’t buy a cd of your favorite tunes or a special mix why shouldn’t you be allowed to compile one?
  • How long should a copyright last? What about when the original author dies? Should descendents be allowed to inherit the copyright?
  • Do rules of citation inhibit or advance the dissemination of information and knowledge?
  • How do you decide when something is a violation of intellectual property? For example, if you tried to publish a book called “Sally Potter and the World of Bogwarts” about an English orphan girl who finds out she is a witch and goes off to a magic school, where she has lots of exciting adventures and learns to play quodditch, it would be considered an infringement on J.K. Rowling’s copyright on her Harry Potter books, even if you did not actually copy a single sentence out of those books. But at some point we have to take ideas from other books. Where do you draw the line?

4) Discuss how these intellectual property questions relate to genetic engineering. (See Who Owns Genes? background discussion.)

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