How Novel Icefish Genes Can Improve Human Health
Description
This lesson supports concepts covered in the film The Birth and Death of Genes. After watching the film and reading a couple of scientific passages, students explain how understanding about icefish adaptations might help develop treatments for health conditions.
Students will read about two common human conditions: anemia and osteoporosis. Both share similarities with icefish adaptations. Students are then asked to explain how icefish adaptations affect different aspects of physiology and make inferences about how studying the genetics of these traits could help develop treatments to improve human health. In an extension activity, students complete a framework for a short essay about how icefish can serve as a model organism for studying human health.
Student Learning Targets
Describe the connections between a genetic variation, a trait affecting a protein or cell, and an organism’s physiology.
Estimated Time
Key Terms
anemia, blood, bone density, hemoglobin, model organism, mutation, osteoporosis, oxygen, trait, variation
Terms of Use
The resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. No rights are granted to use HHMI’s or BioInteractive’s names or logos independent from this Resource or in any derivative works.
Version History
NGSS (2013)
HS-LS1-2, HS-LS3-1, HS-LS4-4; SEP6
AP Biology (2019)
EVO-1.C, EVO-1.O, IST-2.E, IST-4.A, IST-4.B, ; SP1, SP6
IB Biology (2016)
3.1, 5.2, 6.2
AP Environmental Science (2020)
Topic(s): 2.4, 2.6
Learning Objectives & Practices: ERT-2.H, ERT-2.F, SP3, SP5
IB Environmental Systems and Societies (2017)
3.2
Common Core (2010)
ELA.WHST.9–12.4, ELA.WHST.9–12.9
Vision and Change (2009)
CC1, CC2, CC5; DP1, DP6