Meiosis Remodeled: Inclusion of New Parts to Poppit Bead Models Enhances Understanding of Meiosis

Abstract

A long-standing tradition uses strings of poppit beads of different colors to model meiosis, especially to show how segments of paired homologous chromosomes are recombined. Our use of orthodontic latex bands to model cohesion of sister chromatids, and plastic coffee stirrers as microtubules, extends what can normally be achieved with ‘standard’ commercial kits of beads, so emphasizing the importance of four key elements of meiosis: (a) the role of chromosome replication before meiosis itself begins; (b) pairing and exchange (chiasma formation) of homologous chromosomes during meiosis I; (c) centromere (kinetochore) attachment and orientation within/on the spindle during meiosis I and meiosis II; and (d) the differential loss of arm and centromere cohesion at onset of anaphase I and anaphase II. These are essential elements of meiosis that students best need to visualize, not just read and think about. Bead modeling leads them in that direction, as our gallery of figures and accompanying text show. Citation: LaFountain JR, Rickards GK. 2022. Meiosis remodeled: Inclusion of new parts to Poppit Bead models enhances understanding of meiosis. CourseSource. https://doi.org/10.24918/ cs.2022.2 Editor: Leocadia Paliulis, Bucknell University Received: 3/24/2021; Accepted: 10/7/2021; Published: 2/3/2022 Copyright: © 2022 LaFountain and Rickards. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. The authors affirm that they own the copyright to all figures and drawings and written text, except for figures in supporting material entitled ‘Meiosis Survey’ where questions 25 – 30 contain drawings from a textbook, for which the authors have obtained permission and annotated on the drawings with this statement: ‘From CUMMINGS. Instructor’s edition for Cummings’ Human Heredity: Principles and Issues, Tenth Edition.' © 2014 Brooks/Cole, a part of Cengage, Inc. Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions Conflict of Interest and Funding Statement: Neither of the authors has a financial, personal, or professional conflict of interest related to this work Supporting Materials: Supporting File S1. Meiosis remodeled – Meiosis survey PowerPoint slides *Correspondence to: James R. LaFountain Jr. 657 Cooke Hall, University at Buffalo North Campus, Buffalo, NY 14260. Email: jrl@buffalo.edu. Telephone: (716) 645-4965. Fax: (716) 645-2975 CourseSource | www.coursesource.org 2022 | Volume 09 1 Lesson