Unit 4 Reflection

Units 4 essential question was "Why is sex so great?" The themes were meiosis vs. mitosis and Mendel's laws. We also discussed the different types of alleles and how we can predict the genotypes of offspring. Sexual and asexual reproduction were also introduced. I think I understood most of the topics quite well. It is a little difficult for me to understand monohybrid and dihybrid crosses, especially if the individuals are heterozygous. Epistasis can also be very confusing sometimes.

From the infogrpahic, I realized how important it is to learn how to include only vital information and make it look presentable and interesting for someone to actually take in information well. I understand some of the complicated genetic concepts now, although I have A LOT of unanswered questions. I wonder what traits are hereditary? How much does genotype determine about a person?  Will we ever be able to change a persons genotype? Can we clone humans?  and of course WHY is the ratio of men to woman 101:100???etc. 

According to the questionnaire, I am a multimodal learner and prefer all different methods: 

• Visual 8
• Aural 11
• Read/Write 10
• Kinesthetic 12

 Personally, I am surprised that I got such a high score for kinesthetic. I personally prefer reading/writing and aural methods. Usually, I just read all the important terms out loud, or have someone quiz me. To prepare for the test this time, I will make flashcards, write a question and answer, have someone ask me the questions and answer them, and then re-write the ones I got wrong. I might even make some little hand motions to clear up confusing concepts. 

Coin Sex Lab

In this lab, we flipped coins to simulate sex and determine the probability of what alleles multiple offspring will receive. Coins serve as a model for genetics concepts where genes randomly segregate during meiosis and come together during recombination. We determined the sex of offspring, chances of having bipolar disorder, an autosomal (non sex) and monohybrid (only one pair of alleles) trait, and chances of being colorblind, an X linked recessive trait.

In the di-hybrid cross simulation, we looked at the alleles on the genes for hair and eye color of the offspring of two double heterozygous individuals. We hypothesized that the probability of them having a child with blonde hair and blue eyes is 1/16. The expected results were 9 with brown hair and eyes, 3 with brown hair blue eyes, 3 with blonde hair brown eyes, and 1 offspring with blonde hair and blue eyes who would be homologous recessive. However, we got 7 brown hair/ eyes, 3 brown hair/ blue eyes, 4 with blonde hair/ brown eyes, and TWO with blonde hair and blue eyes. Unlikely things happened. We did not get the expected ratio of 9:3:3:1, but instead got 7:3:4:2. This could be because it was probable but it happened to lean towards the unlikely side. Also, because of the law of averages, the more trials the closer the probability, and if we had done more trials it would have been much closer.

The limit of using probability to predict our offspring is that sometimes we may not know the genotypes of the parents to predict the traits of the offspring. We also do not know what exact pairs of alleles the offspring may receive.

It made me more aware of the risk my own children may be at of having disorders or the chances they have to receive certain traits. For example, my offspring may have bipolar disorder, even though I do not have it, but my spouse does. This made me more aware of disorders and traits that can happen.

Genetics Infographic

In case it doesnt work, or its too small, here is the link to my original  

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/9417023-genetics-inforgraphic