Features

New to This Edition

The 5th edition of Genetics Essentials is now supported in Achieve. Achieve supports educators and students throughout the full range of instruction, including assets suitable for pre-class preparation, in-class active learning, and post-class study and assessment. The pairing of a powerful new platform with outstanding biology content provides an unrivaled learning experience.

Features of Achieve include:

• A design guided by learning science research. Co-designed through extensive collaboration and testing by both students and faculty including two levels of Institutional Review Board approval for every study of Achieve
• A learning path of powerful content including pre-class, in-class, and post-class activities and assessments.
• A detailed gradebook with insights for just-in-time teaching and reporting on student achievement by learning objective.
• Easy integration and gradebook sync with iClicker classroom engagement solutions.　
• Simple integration with your campus LMS and availability through Inclusive Access programs.

New media and assessment features in Achieve include:

• Assessment questions with hints, feedback, and solutions provide a powerful pedagogical framework to teach students problem solving skills through formative assessments
• Adaptive Quizzes and Reading Quizzes can be assigned before class to encourage reading and pre-class preparation.
• The Active Learning Hub with in-class activities contains slides and worksheets to help you easily implement more active learning in your classroom
• Concept Mapping Problems allow students to learn through this effective method while still being automatically graded
• Problem Solving Videos provide a step-by-step methodology for working through tough problems
• Math readiness assignments allow for remediation of weak math skills that could hold students back in genetics

Updates to the text:

• Connecting Problems allow students to connect concepts across chapters. These questions ask students to integrate what they have learned over several chapters, and to apply what they learned to problem solving.
• Concept Mapping Exercises help students conceptually map out topics within a chapter, including key terms and describing how they are connected. Creating connections between concepts and ideas is critically important for effective learning. These new concept mapping exercises are designed to help students build understanding of the relationships among important concepts and terms by creating a visual map that depicts these relationships. These problems can be assigned as homework, or students can work on them in groups, allowing them to discuss how to organize the concepts in a map.
• End-of-chapter Learning Objectives help frame the concepts covered in each section. A set of Learning Objectives, one for each A-head (followed by key concepts for that A-head), helps students identify the main learning goals for each chapter.

Genetics Essentials continues to stay on the cutting edge of genetics discoveries:

1. More content on modifications of CRISPR-Cas systems and their various functions, such as making single-stranded cuts in DNA, making single base substitutions, altering cellular DNA, studying evolution, and inhibiting gene expression.
2. Updated biotechnology in Chapter 14 to include third-generation sequencing technologies, such as PacBio and nanopore sequencing, and gene therapy.  This revision also pared-back coverage of outdated techniques such as locating DNA fragments with probes, genomic libraries, and pyrosequencing.
3. Revised organization of epigenetics section in chapter 12. This section now moves from the molecular details of epigenetic modifications, to epigenetics in development, to epigenetics in behavior.
4. New section on Interpreting Phylogenetic Trees in Chapter 18