School Attendance

Question 1

Imagine you work at the local museum of natural history, which is opening a wing dedicated to genetics. The museum is scheduling a speech at the grand opening for a group of high school students in attendance and wants you to write it.

Deliver a 700- to 1,050-word transcript of the speech you would give, including the following:

• Discuss factors that lead to genetic variations in a population by using the Hardy-Weinberg law that describes allele frequencies in a population.
• Explain how animal behaviors, including human behaviors, are governed by genetic inheritance.
• Explain how the laboratory mouse has become a valuable model organism for the study of development and genetics.
  • What other animal models are used?
  • What contribution(s) has research using Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster made in the study of animal behavior and population genetics?
• Elaborate on the future of human disease diagnosis using the data from the Human Genome Project.
• Provide sufficient examples to make the speech relevant to high school students.

Question 2

What is cloning, DNA fingerprinting, and genetic engineering? What are some pros and cons of each issue? Do you support cloning, DNA fingerprinting, and genetic engineering? Why?