Of Mutant Fruit Flies and Such

Marisa attended a class at the Cold Spring Harbor DNA Learning Center this week.  It was set up by one of the homeschooling e-groups that I belong to. It was well run and so interesting!  The program was geared to their level (4^th-6^th grade) and the instructor was great.

The kids worked in pairs extracting DNA from e-coli bacteria  (It seems there is a non-harmful version of it thank goodness!) using soap ( it breaks down the lipids in the cell wall) and rubbing alcohol. 

Under the stereo microscopes they also got to view fruit flies-many of them mutant.  

Marisa loved the class. Science is her thing.  I enjoyed it also and I now know the following:

1.      A fruit fly can indeed have a leg grow out of it’s head

2.      All blond haired people have the same singular ancestor

3.      A single strand of DNA is six feet long and 1,000,000 times thinner than a strand of hair. (I knew that but had forgotten it, so in my advanced dotage, it was a lot like learning it over again!)

4.      Albino turtles have a very short lifespan, not because they are colorless per se, but because they stand out from the rest and are therefore easier for predators to pick off. 

So what activity can we do next that can possibly beat mutant fruit flies? 

Well, if you can believe it, Marisa is going to a unicycling class!  For anyone who doesn’t know, I was a darned good unicyclist when I was much (about 33 years ago) younger and even brought it to college as a mode of transportation. I'm thinking I might have to totally mortify my daughter and give the unicycle a shot myself. (I consider it payback for labor)

Anyway, now the big question is, 'Does Marisa have it in her DNA to unicycle as well as mom?' Hmmmm, I wonder if we extracted a bit whether we’d be able to tell….