Puzzle
Activity 2.1: Mystery Decoder
Directions
Form at least six groups of participants and have the groups form a circle. Each team receives any one of the genomes from Handout Handout 2.1 and any one of the Decoding Keys from Handout 2.2. Give teams five minutes to try to decode their genomes, write down the decoded characteristics and guess the identity of the organism. Suggest that they use the list of characteristics from Lesson 1. Then engage the group with the following.
- Can you share any difficulties you had in decoding your genome?.
- Can you explain what additional information would have been helpful in figuring out the identity of your organism?
Remind participants that in order to solve complex problems, scientists often share information with other scientists in order to solve their problems. If it did not come out in the discussion, point out that each team, as scientists, were given only part of the decoding key they needed.
In order to help the teams figure out the identity of their organism, ask them to trade their decoder with the next pair to their left in the circle and then try again to identify their organism. Teams continue to trade decoders with the group to their left until they can decode enough characteristics to determine their organism’s identity. Then question the group.
- Explain why sharing decoders helped you identify your organism.
- What consequence would occur if only one team had decoders and other teams did not?
- Talk about why it might be more difficult to identify your organism if you only had one characteristic rather than many?
Explain what would happen if there was a mistake made in the second gene for the elephant and it was mutated from 9%H!H to 5%H!H.
- Discuss why you might think that such a mutation would change the whole animal or only part of it?
Next: Activity 2.2: M&M Codes