Nasco Biology Lab Kit

Designed to align with and support the first year college/advanced placement level high school biology curriculum standards and science practices. This student lab station comes in a well-packaged container and is designed for non-conventional lab situations such as online schooling, or any situation that calls for an uncompromised lab experience with or without the supervision of an experienced lab teacher and without the need for a traditional lab facility. Preparation, safety, and cleanup is easy and convenient. There are eight main lab investigations in the kit (two for each AP® Bio Big Idea), with a total of 24 labs, including a student-guided inquiry for each of the eight main lab investigations. Contains everything needed to perform all the experiments, with the exception of some common household items. Some components require refrigerator and freezer storage. For up to four students. Allow extra delivery time.

Eight main lab investigations include:

1. Diffusion and Osmosis: Surface area and cell size, modeling, osmosis in live water plant cells, and student-guided inquiry into water potential of plant tissues and osmosis connections to plant transpiration.

2. Changes Within Populations: PTC taste test global analysis, simulations of changes within populations (equilibrium, natural selection, genetic drift), mathematical modeling of allele frequencies within a population, and student-guided inquiry.

3. Evolutionary Relationships: Cladogram construction, biochemical analyses of gene and protein sequence percent similarities and differences, BLAST database tutorial and cladogram construction for comparing evolutionary relationships, Entrez Gene database tutorial comparing normal gene sequences to chromosomal aberrations in human diseases, and student-guided inquiry.

4. Mitosis and Meiosis: Loss of cell cycle control analysis in cancer cells using human karyotypes, environmental abiotic effects on mitotic rates and data analysis for significance, student-guided inquiry on environmental effects on mitosis, and crossing over in meiosis demonstrating increased genetic variability in subsequent generations.

5. Enzyme Activity Catalase enzyme and breakdown of toxins in the liver, enzyme specificity using lactase, enzyme rates of reaction assay and baseline, effect of pH on enzymatic activity, and student-guided inquiry for other potential environmental effects on enzyme activity.

6. Predictions on effect of different abiotic conditions on photosynthesis and the effect of exercise on cellular respiration waste product production rates, measuring photosynthesis and cellular respiration rates using the Floating Leaf Disk technique, and student-guided inquiry.

7. Biotechnology simulation of transforming the human insulin-making gene into a bacterial plasmid, bacterial transformation of the jellyfish gene for green fluorescence into E. coli, transformation efficiency calculations, and student-guided inquiry of the newly transformed bacterial colonies.

8. Environmental impact of eating at lower trophic levels, energy transfer and productivity lab using yeast fermentation of corn sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide, and student-guided inquiry on variables that could potentially increase the rate of fermentation for biofuel production.

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