Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Unit 4 Reflection

To recap the coin sex lab we just did, we tried making different genetic combinations with coins. The coins repersented the alleles the parents have, and when we flipped them and recorded the combonatitons, it was as if the coins had sex. In most of our labs the hypothesis fit very closely with the resuts from the lab, like when we hyothesised that fifty percent of our hypothetical children would be girls and the other half boys, and the coin results reflected that. However when we tried the dihybrid combonation, we hypothesised that two of our  children out of sixteen would be blond and blue eyes, however none of the kids had it when we tested it with the coins. This reflects to our life becuase when we decide to have kids our alleles are passed down and its cool to be able to guess ahead of time the childs phenotypes or physical appearance.

This unit we asked the question, why is sex so great? Sex has a negative connotation in our society, but it is the fundamentals of life itself. We also covered the importance of genetics. Being able to understand genetics is crucial. When Gregor Mendel discovered the law of segregation and law of independent assortment, it changed how scientists thought about genetics as a whole. Being able to understand genetics can help prevent diseases that run genetically, and predict what your child may look like. All traits the child has originally belonged to the parents and through meiosis, the baby receives part of the genetic code. I had a little trouble understanding the method behind dihybrid crosses and drawing a punnet square example of a dihybrid cross, but after the do now and the CFU, I was able to make one without too much hassle.

This chapter made me think about my genetics, and what traits I may have gotten from my parents. I wonder if I will ever get taller. I wish I was just a little bit taller,  and genetically I should have an inch or two left, I just want to grow really bad. I also wish genetically I was stronger, but I'm not so I have to just work harder to get on the same level as others. It's very interesting learning about genetics. I wonder if scientifically you could predict a diagram of your kid by plugging in all your genetic traits.

https://www.easel.ly/infographic/kj82u3 here is a link to my infographic on genetics.

here is a copy right free picture of a punnet square: