Development and Examination of Molecular Biology Experiments in High School Biology: Using Genome-Edited Tomatoes

Abstract

Since gene recombination experiments became possible in high school curriculums 20 years ago, various teaching materials in the field of biotechnology have been developed. Recently, various organisms have been developed using genome editing technology. Genome editing technology is considered to be one of the technologies that high school students who will live in the future society should know. However, teaching materials for genome editing have yet to be introduced. Therefore, in this study, we focused on the high GABA tomato, which is one of the various genome-edited organisms under development in Japan. We developed experimental teaching materials for comparing DNA by PCR and electrophoresis using cultivars before and after genome editing. The advantage of using these teaching materials is that it can be expected that high school students themselves will recognize the value of advanced technology used in the real world and acquire the ability to think about biotechnology on their own.