Why worms matter: the importance of nematode diversity for studying biology and evolution

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Erik Andersen, a geneticist at Northwestern University in the USA. He is collecting wild strains of the nematode C. elegans and building a resource of natural genetic diversity, to improve the use of C. elegans in genetic studies.

• This resource also contains an interview with Dr Andersen. If your students have questions for Dr Andersen, they can send them to him online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Dr Andersen will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Dr Andersen’s research and challenges them to help Dr Andersen collect nematodes. Your students can contribute to the field of genetics by sending nematodes to Dr Andersen!

• An animation about Dr Andersen’s work is available through the weblink, along with a downloadable script.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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