A Rapid Genetic Screen Using Wisconsin Fast Plants®: A Hands-On Approach to Inheritance of de novo Mutations

Some concepts in genetics, such as genetic screens, are complex for students to visualize in a classroom and can be cumbersome to undertake in the laboratory. Typically, very large populations are needed, which can be addressed by using micro-organisms. However, students can struggle with phenotyping microbes. For macroscopic organisms, the number of offspring produced, and the generation time can be challenging. I developed this lesson as a small-scale genetic screen of Fast Plants®. These plants are amenable to teaching labs as they have simple growth requirements, a short generation time, and produce numerous seeds that can be stored for years. Seeds used for this screen are purchased pre-treated with a DNA damaging agent, removing the need for in-house use of mutagens. Also, students can screen the phenotypes without specialized equipment. The initial lesson begins with an examination of the first generation of plants. Later their offspring are screened for altered phenotypes. Students responded well to having full-grown plants available on the first day of the lab project. This lesson fostered student collaboration, as they worked with class datasets. Differences in growth due to mutagenesis treatment in the first generation were clear to students who had not worked with plants before. Identifying plants with altered phenotypes in the next generation was more of a challenge. This lesson incorporates key concepts such as somatic and germline mutations, the impact of such mutations on phenotype, and the inheritance of mutation alleles, and provides a hands-on way to illustrate these concepts. Citation: Klocko AL. 2022. A Rapid Genetic Screen Using Wisconsin Fast Plants®: A Hands-On Approach to Inheritance of de novo Mutations. CourseSource 9. https://doi.org/10.24918/ cs.2022.28 Editor: Rachelle Spell, Emory University Received: 6/18/2021; Accepted: 4/5/2022; Published: 10/3/2022 Copyright: © 2022 Klocko. 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 and source are credited. Conflict of Interest and Funding Statement: The author does not have a financial, personal, or professional conflict of interest related to this work. Supporting Materials: S1. Fast Plant Screen – Introductory slides; S2. Fast Plant Screen – Supply list; S3. Fast Plant Screen – M1 planting scheme; S4. Fast Plant Screen – M1 data collection spreadsheet; S5. Fast Plant Screen – M1 generation lab packet; S6. Fast Plant Screen – M2 generation lab packet; S7. Fast Plant Screen – How to create a randomized planting plan; S8. Fast Plant Screen – Rubric for evaluating hypothesis and graphic, and example hypotheses. *Correspondence to: Amy L. Klocko, Department of Biology, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO 80918 CourseSource | www.coursesource.org 2022 | Volume 09 1 Lesson