Review

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

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Practical protocols

The evolution of mammoths and their living relatives
 

(For teachers)

Anna Lorenc och Dean Madden (Ed.)

In this activity, the evolutionary relationship of the extinct Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) to modern elephants and other species is investigated. Complete mitokondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences are used for this purpose.

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The evolution of mammoths and their living relatives

(For students)

Anna Lorenc och Dean Madden (Ed.)

How are Asian and African elephants related to Wooly mammoths?
   

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Simulating evolution

A game to teach some principles of evolution using man-made artifacts
 

John A. Barker

The principles determining the changes in structure which occur during the evolution of organisms can be applied to any collection of specimens. These can be arranged into ‘evolutionary trees’, showing the order in which changes in structure probably occurred. The same kind of analysis can be applied to a collection of man-made artefacts, pretending that each is an organism and then determining the probable course of evolution. The phenomena of divergence of closely related forms, convergence of distantly related forms, and parallel evolution can all be illustrated.

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Building a phylogenetic tree

This activity shows how phylogenetic trees are constructed using the morphological characteristics of organisms. It is an introduction to modern systematics that classify organisms according to their evolutionary relatedness.

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