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I thought I'd post the inspiration for my exam questions in my intro genetics class since there are a few fun ones! Thanks to @hljordt for indulging my love of "ripped from the headlines" questions and co-writing the exam with me.
mRNA vaccines are like the perfect central dogma question. I actually used the real Pfizer vaccine sequence (which is the one I recently got) as a starting point! Linked from this article https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/scientists-reverse-engineer-mrna-sequence-of-moderna-vaccine-68640
Triploid oysters were used as the basis for a meiosis question https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/todays-oysters-are-mutants/380858/
Can't have an exam without a cat genetics question. Cornish Rex cats have neat curly hair. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0067105
Very nice 2 gene color spectrum of trout. The students had to figure out the genotype of an ambiguous albino fish they requested from the authors (not to impugn their reputation! I do take some poetic license) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0214034
Made some good pedigree questions about earwax type https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1733
And last but not least, a fun one thinking about how to design a tRNA nonsense suppressor gene therapy. I was pretty pleased with myself for this question since it's increasingly hard to come up with new ways to ask genetic code questions https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08329-4
Props to my students for doing pretty well on the exam in a difficult quarter!
