30 Nov 2018

Creating an Introductory Biology Lab Involving Terrestrial Isopods and Isoenzyme Electrophoresis

Katherine Peterson '18

The purpose following research was to design a new lab for the Integrated Concepts of Biology II class at Hamline University. For the sake of this seminar, the lab and research will be presented in a demo student talk which mimics what future talks will look like. The demo student talk will be focused on finding if evolution is occurring in an isopod population and the impact of genetic drift has on this evolution. This project has two hypothesizes; 1.) that there will be variation within the genotypes for both enzymes, and 2.) that both enzymes’ results will differ from the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. These hypothesizes are tested through preforming isoenzymes electrophoresis on the isopods. Isopods tend to have isolated populations and experience genetic drift, so they are good subjects for this study. The enzymes observed were Phosphoglucomutase and Malate dehydrogenase. Variation was found in the genotypes for both enzymes, but was unable to be compared to the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. Students in future labs will be using compiled data from previous years, to mimic this the results were multiplied by ten to preform statistics. With the addition of the “fake data” the results for both enzymes were significantly different from the predicted results of the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. This means evolution was occurring and that, due to the location of the population, genetic drift does play a significant part in this evolution.

Title not submitted

Kylie Russell '18