Recurring Strategy Assignment- Adryan

Class context:
- Biology
- 10th grade
- History of the development of the structure of DNA

Learning objectives:
The students will understand that the structure of DNA was a concept that was developed over time.
The students will know scientists associated with the development of DNA structure.
The students will be able to identify and describe scientific progress in our understanding of DNA.

Virginia Standards of Learning:

Bio.5
e) historical development of the structural model of DNA
g) the structure, function, and replication of nucleic acids

The activity must include the following components:

1. Overview:
o This activity will last three days of 90 minute classes.
o All of the students will be working on all of the activities in pairs.
o This activity will be given in the middle of the unit. The activities will be paired with
instruction of the scientists and the results of their experiments. After the students do
the activities that relate to the real experiments, I will tell the students what actually
happened and the results that the scientists had to advance our understanding of DNA.

Class Year(s) Historical Description Class Problem

1 1944 Oswald Avery identifies DNA as the
“transforming principle”. By the 1940’s
scientists knew that there was some
mechanism by which traits were passed
from parent to offspring. It was the work
of Oswalt Avery in the early 40’s that DNA
was identified as the molecule that
“transformed” a cell into a functional unit.
Avery worked with the pneumonia
bacteria, pneumococcus. He discovered
that a live harmless form of the bacteria
would become deadly if mixed with an
inert but lethal bacterium. Testing
different parts of the bacteria, he
discovered that what was making them
deadly was not the protein or
Using the understanding that
there is a “transforming
principle” students will develop
their own unique experiment in
pairs. I will go over the idea that
Avery used bacteria, both inert
and active to show that
somehow, something from the
harmful bacteria was
“transforming” the inert
bacterial.
Without revealing the results of
Avery’s experiment, I will ask
the students to figure out a way
to use inert and deadly bacteria
to isolate what part is the
 carbohydrate parts but the nucleic acid.
2 1950 Erwin Chargaff reads Avery’s paper and
says, “[Avery] showed us where to look for
it. I resolve to search for this text”.
Chargaff ends up finding the “text” of
Avery’s amino acids.
Chargaff devises a method of determining
the nitrogenous components of DNA. In
1950, he determines that the number of
guanine units is equal to the number of
cytosine units, and the number of adenine
units is the same as the number of
thymine units. This forms the foundation
of our understanding of nucleotide base-
pairing (A-T, G-C) which are also known as
“Chargaff’s Rules”
During his time, Chargaff had a lot of
resistance with journal editors to publish
his findings. This shows how new ideas,
although supported by evidence, can still
be resisted because there is not a lot of
surrounding evidence to back it up.
“transforming principle”.
The students will do a write-up
where they formulate the
independent and dependent
variables, control group, and
constants on a guided rubric.
After creating their experiment,
I will go over the results of
Avery’s experiment and they
will examine and evaluate the
experiment and how it
compares to how they thought
to do the experiment.
The story of Chargaff
demonstrates how technology
goes hand in hand with
scientific discovery. The
students will look at three steps
that Chargaff used to analyze
DNA.
This first is separation of
mixture into individual
components by paper
chromatography. I will do a
demonstration of paper
chromatography using the
classic separating the dye from
different types of black ink. This
will show how different
compounds are separated.
In the case of Chargaff, he
isolated the separated them
into salts until finally, the salts
were analyzed by their
absorption spectra to
determine whether they were
purine or pyrimidine. I will
show videos of how this is done
and give examples of
chromatography graphs for
students to look at and analyze.
Doing their own research, I
 want the students to look up
the structures of purines and
pyrimidines to show how they
differ and how they bond
together using hydrogen bonds
on a worksheet.

3 1951-1953 Rosalind Franklin, working with Maurice
Wilkins between 1951 and 1952, deduced
based on x-ray crystallography that
phosphates were on the outside of DNA in
a helical structure.
Watson and Crick, using Franklin's image
and models, published the structure of
DNA in Nature, April 1953.
The students will look at
different x-ray crystallography
images to see if they can come
up with any patterns. Then I will
show them the famous DNA x-
ray picture and see if they can
guess what they were able to
figure out from it before telling
them what it meant.

Using that information, I would

have the students build models
to see if they could create a
model of DNA.

2. The evidence or data that the students will receive for each activity
a. I will have the appropriate pictures of lab equipment, pictures of machines, experiments,
and x-ray pictures ready for the students to use.
3. Students will be working in pairs in each of the activities described above. As a final project, the
students will create a timeline of events that happened using Google Slides. They will go through
each era based on the three days and describe: 1) The scientists involved 2) The discoveries made,
and 3) The experiments used to come to those conclusions. The students will turn the project in
digitally.
4. Some additional resources for students to look at during their free time would be:
a. Youtube video of the discovery of DNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17foW4mLBFk&t=1177s
b. An overview of DNA and Replication coloring activity. Students will color the different
parts of DNA and use color to see how a new strand is replicated. See additional
document attached.
5. References:
https://www.dna-worldwide.com/resource/160/history-dna-timeline#1
http://www.jbc.org/content/280/24/e21