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Prying into Prions: Investigating Chronic Wasting Disease
This supplemental unit for middle- and high-school students explores prion diseases, including chronic wasting disease. In six lessons, students learn about transmissible spongiform encephalopathies by examining the role of proteins in organisms, the chemistry and properties of proteins, the genetic processes that create proteins and how proteins can become pathogenic. Students also study how chronic wasting disease is affecting Illinois’ white-tailed deer herd and what control measures are being taken.
Click here for the Chronic Wasting Disease Management page from IDNR.
Adapted by the IDNR Division of Education with permission from Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the lessons are designed to be taught in sequence. A video is available. All lessons are correlated to the Next Generation Science Standards.
These activities are from the Prying into Prions: Investigating Chronic Wasting Disease supplemental teaching unit.
Middle School
MS-LS3-1 - Students will develop and use a model to describe why structural changes to genes (mutations) located on chromosomes may affect proteins and may result in harmful, beneficial, or neutral effects to the structure and function of the organism.
High School
HS-LS1-1 - Students will construct an explanation based on evidence for how the structure of DNA determines the structure of proteins which carry out the essential functions of life through systems of specialized cells.
HS-LS3-1 - Students will ask questions to clarify relationships about the role of DNA and chromosomes in coding the instructions for characteristic traits passed from parents to offspring.
HS-LS3-2 - Students will make and defend a claim based on evidence that inheritable genetic variations may result from: (1) new genetic combinations through meiosis, (2) viable errors occurring during replication, and/or (3) mutations caused by environmental factors.