Lesson: how to read a genome file, line by line
A ready-to-run introductory genetics lesson for age 13 and up, free to use in any school, college or university. What the four columns of a genome file mean, why the last one has two letters, why a position number is meaningless without knowing which edition of the map it was measured on — and the one thing such a file can never tell you. Uses our own teaching file, never a student’s data.
Updated Sep 10, 2026 7 75
Lesson: genes and rsIDs, and what a catalogue actually measures
A ready-to-run genetics lesson for age 16 and up, free to use in any school, college or university. One book everybody owns a copy of: a chapter is a gene, and an rsID names a letter that differs between copies. Then students count those letters in a real catalogue and find the counts measure research attention rather than biology.
Updated Sep 9, 2026 7 68
Lesson: how to read a pedigree, and where the textbook rule breaks
A free genetics lesson on pedigree analysis. Three clean family trees teach the three inheritance patterns; the fourth is real, and the rule the class just learned gives the wrong answer on it.
Updated Sep 8, 2026 7 73
Lesson: why one broken gene copy costs 94% of an enzyme
A free chemistry lesson with one coin per student. Ask a class what one broken copy of a gene out of two costs you and they will say half. For this enzyme the answer is 94%, the class can compute it in twelve minutes, and the reason is the shape of the protein rather than anything in the DNA.
Updated Sep 8, 2026 8 61
Lesson: lactose tolerance and natural selection
A free genetics lesson on natural selection, with no equipment needed. The class computes a prediction from real allele frequencies, gets a clean answer, and then finds out it is wrong — because the same solution evolved four separate times in the last few thousand years.
Updated Sep 7, 2026 6 67
Lesson: the PTC taste test, and why the textbook version is wrong
A ready-to-run genetics lesson built on the PTC taste test — free to use in any school, college or university. Forty minutes, one paper strip, and the textbook version of the trait turns out to be wrong in a way that is more interesting than the original.
Updated Sep 7, 2026 7 92
The Real Genetics Behind Spider-Man
Spider-Man is back in cinemas, so here is the honest version: what each of those abilities would actually require, and what the published research says about the three that turn out to be real — in people, right now.
Updated Sep 7, 2026 10 70