Or aliens, to be correct. Today, we looked a little deeper into how traits are inherited and determined what the alien offspring would look like from two aliens with heterozygous genes. We learned that not all genes are inherited through simple dominant/recessive genes. Our aliens had some co-dominant genes, some incomplete dominance, and one sex-linked trait. We did another activity where coins represented the two different alleles possible for guinea pig hair color and found the predicted outcome and then looked at our results as a class after each person did the toss 10 times. We saw some interesting differences between each others results, and then how the group as a whole came pretty close to the expected outcome, but it wasn't exact. Hopefully everyone understands that we can't know exactly what the outcome will be, and that inheritance is complicated!
Videos: Incomplete Dominance, Codominance, Polygenic Traits, and Epistasis! by the Amoeba Sisters--this is the video we watched in class that goes into other modes of inheritance. The Future of Genetics--TedEd Are GMOs Good or Bad? Look into one of the controversies around genetic engineering. Articles/Books: Why do huskies have blue eyes? The Human Genome Project You can see which genes have been found on each chromosome. 5 Controversies of Modern Genetics Activities: Teach Genetics with Jelly Beans This is another fun activity to show how traits are passed from parent to child. DNA Profiling & CODIS: Who Robbed the Bank This requires a deeper understanding of the structure of DNA than we went into in class, but could be fun for anyone who is interested in learning more about this. Perform a Dihybrid Cross This website uses slideshows, animations, etc. . . to walk through various aspects of Mendelian Inheritance.
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This week, we started exploring heredity and traits. First, we got to test out different "bird beaks" and see which beaks were able to pick up which seeds best. This started our discussion on how traits are passed from one generation to the next and why it matters which traits are passed on. Next, they did a short vocabulary match so I could see what words they were already familiar with and we could begin to discuss genetics using the proper vocabulary. We went over a basic Punnett Square for eye color and the kids asked great questions so we were able to informally talk about incomplete dominance and why the recessive alleles are important, even if they don't manifest in the physical appearance (phenotype). I was really impressed with their ideas in this discussion and how they were thinking about this. Our final activity was to look as some of our own traits and see if we could figure out our own genotypes depending on if we showed the dominant or recessive trait.
Videos: Amoeba Sisters: Monohybrids and the Punnett Square Guinea Pigs--This will describe more about the dominant and recessive alleles that we talked about in class. Amoeba Sisters: Pedigrees--This one goes over the pedigree chart which we briefly talked about at the end of class because there is a place to fill one out after gathering the information about your family this week. How Mendel's Pea Plants Helped Us Understand Genetics--We briefly introduced Gregor Mendel today, but didn't get a chance to talk much about his experiments that led to early understanding of genetics. This is a short Ted-Ed on what he did. Books: Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas--A great, approachable book about Mendel and his experiments. Activities: Gregor Mendel Lesson Ideas--This blog post contains notebooking pages, links to videos and books, and more ideas to go along with this study--like growing your own pea plants at home. Conduct your own genetic experiments with plants, just like Mendel did! Try this experiment. If pedigrees are interesting to you, there are lots of worksheets and activities available to learn more about how they work. This is one example, but there are a lot of others out there, too. Once again, if you have access to it, I highly recommend exploring Gizmos and their options under genetics--there are so many simulations and virtual experiments that the students can play with. Try Mouse Genetics or Chicken Genetics. This month, we're exploring genetics! We started off with a conversation about our favorite traits and whether or not we think they are passed down from our family members. We watched a short video about DNA and genes and then it was time to take a look at some real DNA. The students worked in pairs to extract the DNA from a strawberry. Pretty amazing that we can isolate DNA--and as we explained to the kids, we can't see the individual double helix strands with our naked eye, but we can see a lot of strands grouped together. We compared this to not being able to see a single thread from a few houses away, but if you wound a lot of threads together to make a thick rope, you could see it even from a distance. They wanted to see if anything was visible under the microscope, so we checked each of the samples, but I'm not sure that the few little lines we saw were actually DNA (check out the video link below to see strawberry DNA under the microscope). But it was fun to look, and I love that the kids are thinking about these things. This was a great start to our DNA unit and there are so many amazing activities out there to deepen this study. We'll be exploring human traits and how DNA codes for proteins in the next couple weeks, but make sure you check out the links below if you want to do more with this unit.
Videos: Bill Nye: Genes--Overview of genes, chromosomes, DNA, dominant and recessive traits. What is DNA and How Does It Work? --A 5 min. explanation for what DNA is. Strawberry DNA Under the Microscope--This looks a lot clearer than what we saw! Books: The Usborne Introduction to Genes and DNA--This is a great, easy to understand, overview with fantastic pictures and illustrations. This website includes links to supporting websites. Activities: Extract DNA from a Strawberry--The instructions for what we did in class are here if anyone wanted to try again at home. Basic Genetics-- This website has a lots of videos, brief explanations, and virtual activities about everything genetics. You can build a DNA molecule, match chromosomes to build a karyotype, and a lot more! |
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May 2020
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