Let high school students appreciate the beauty of life science

Therefore, in teaching, teachers must try every means to cultivate students' biological thinking, or disciplinary thinking, so that each class, each assignment and each practice in biology are not repeated mechanical exercises, but careful, logical, critical, exploratory and creative thinking activities, so that students can appreciate the charm and significance of disciplinary thinking.

4 Introduce the innovative beauty of life transformation

After entering the 21st century, the achievements of life science and technology are profoundly changing people's mode of production, way of life and way of thinking, and opening up a magnificent picture of life for us in an unprecedented manner. Teachers should show students this magnificent picture of life transformation.

Golden rice rich in carotene, E. coli that can produce human insulin, street trees implanted with the luminous gene of jellyfish to replace street lights... Highly attractive genetic engineering and protein engineering, according to people's expectations, purposefully transform life or even redesign life, creating improved species with certain characteristics that do not exist in nature and are expected by human beings, and its magical power has threatened the traditional concept that distant species can not freely mate for thousands of years. Obtaining crops, poultry and livestock with high yield, stable yield and good quality, breast or bladder biogenerators, genetic diagnosis and treatment, and "superbacteria" that decompose various components of petroleum show a bright future for human society.

In a special review of the history of biological sciences in senior three, I asked the students to list the achievements of Chinese people in the field of life sciences. As a result, few students could list more than three. So, I slowly began to learn:

In 1965, after more than six years of unremitting efforts, Chinese scientists artificially synthesized crystalline bovine insulin with all biological activities, which was the first artificially synthesized protein in the world and opened the era of artificial synthetic biological macromolecules.

In 1981, it synthesized yeast alanine transfer ribonucleic acid (yeast alanine tRNA), the first synthetic nucleic acid molecule in the world.

In 1988, Chinese scientists synthesized a gene against cucumber Mosaic virus, and introduced this gene into the cells of tobacco and other crops, and obtained a new crop strain with strong antiviral ability.

In 1989, Chinese scientists successfully introduced a human growth hormone gene into the fertilized eggs of common carp and bred a genetically modified carp.

In 1992, China's hepatitis B vaccine developed by bioengineering was put on the market, playing an important role in the prevention of hepatitis B.

In 1993, Yuan Longping's two-line hybrid rice began large-scale trial planting. Compared with the original commonly cultivated three-line hybrid rice, the average increase of 15% per hectare was enough to feed the entire Australian population in one year.

In 1995, Chinese scientists introduced the insecticidal protein gene of Bacillus thuringiensis into cotton, and cultivated a new cotton strain with obvious anti-bollworm effect, making China one of the two countries in the world that independently developed insect-resistant cotton (the other is the United States)...

At this time, students concentrate on, as a Chinese pride, sense of honor, sense of mission in the bottom of my heart, these life transformation may become an "irresistible temptation", long-term imprint in the minds of students, for their tomorrow to add wings to take off!

5 Eulogize the sublime beauty of the scientific spirit

In their life, while writing scientific chapters, many biologists everywhere carry forward human values and ideals, and tirelessly pursue social progress and harmony. Their independent thinking, courage to doubt, courage to innovate, perseverance, truth seeking and pragmatism, as well as their valuable cooperation, fraternity and tolerance in work and life, are themselves models of the combination of scientific spirit and humanistic spirit.

The development of life science deeply contains the humanist attitude and spirit of scientists, which are inseparable from biological knowledge and constitute an indispensable teaching content of high school biology curriculum.

I told my students that the naturalist Lamarck, who had always been poor, struggled all his life to find the truth, never stopped writing, and in his old age he was poor and ill, and his daughter borrowed money for his burial after his death.

I tell my students that Mendel, known as the "father of modern genetics," used eight years of pea experiments to reveal the basic laws of biological inheritance, but Mendel's discovery of genetic laws was not taken into account at the time, and his paper was only published in a local journal. A century later, three scientists who had prepared their papers without knowing what Mendel had done that year accidentally came across Mendel's article and immediately gave him the credit.