Did you know?!?!?!

                               Here were some of the "Did you know" from the blood typing games!!

EWWWWWW!!!!!!

Blood Typing Genetics day 2

No daily questions today so that you could quickly get back to your missions on the computer.  Today you finished up the "missions" and started the "Quick game".  While this was loads of fun.... remember you were supposed to be actually ANALYZING their genotypes and predicting what the genotypes of their parents could be.  NOT just watching their reactions as you give them blood transfusions ;)


Tomorrow we will have our normal Daily Question Quiz as well as an open notes quiz to see how you are doing with all of this.  My goal is to wrap this chapter up tomorrow, review on Monday and test on Tuesday.  ( I know I know..... But Miss EEEEEEEEE....... it's the day before Easter break.............)  Well.... my friends...... I still have to do MY job.... so you have to as well!!

Blood Type Genetics On the Computers Day 1

Today's daily question was a way for me to see if you got the information yesterday regarding blood types and the immunology behind it.

Wednesday March 28^th

If you have type O blood – what proteins are found on the outside of your red blood cells?  None

What antibodies are found in your blood plasma? Anti A and Anti B

If you have type O blood, give me TWO possible SETs of genotypes that your parents could have.

You know that each parent has to at least have ONE “i” in their genotype so here are two possible sets

I^ai x I^bi   or    ii x I^bI^a

If you have type B blood – what proteins are found on the outside of your RBCs? B “antigens”

What antibodies are found in your blood plasma? Anti A

Who could you receive blood from? Type A or Type O

We then started into our blood typing activity.  Again this is the link.

Blood Typing Game

Today we focused just on the "mission based" game.  This took you through a couple scenarios where you had to blood type people and then determine what kind of blood they could receive in a transfusion.  Tomorrow we will then go through 3 different patients and determine their phenotype, genotype, and who they can receive blood from.

Blood Typing Genetics

Today's daily question focused on blood types.  The interesting thing about blood types is that they are an example of TWO different forms of complex heredity. First, they have multiple alleles since there are THREE different allleles available. ( You still only carry two of them, but there are three possible).  They are also expressed in a Codominant way.  Remember Co means "both" or "Together" so that means each of the two alleles you have are expressed together.  Here is a shot of our daily questions.

We then got some background information on the immunology behind blood types including what type of antibodies each blood type carries.

This image shows a better description of what your Red Blood Cells (Erythrocytes) would look like and what would be in your blood plasma.

What about if you are + or - ?!?!  That is ANOTHER gene.  Here is a little background on that.

Where are we going with this.  I hope to put together our understanding of genetics to first determine the possible genotypes of people based on their blood type and THEN move another step and predict the possible genotypes of their parents.  Pair that up with our brief discussion on immunology - and we are transfusionist waiting to happen :) 

Here is the link to the blood typing game

Strange but true.... Chimerism

So what if you were really two people in one? Seems impossible huh?! Check out this clip that talks about a real life Chimera and the problems it could cause!!!

More Complex forms of inheritance

         Today we started with a daily question that focused on incomplete dominance.  Many of you wanted to RIGHT away go with your understanding of simple dominant or recessive traits.   There are a LOT of traits though that get inherited in much more complex ways.  Here was today's daily questions

 A common form of incomplete dominance is in hair texture.  There is an allele for curly hair and an allele for straight hair.... if you are HETEROzygous for the trait you would then have an INTERMEDIATE trait... in this case..... Wavy hair.

 After this we continued to work through the notes.  Most of you got through at least multiple alleles and codominance.  We will have a notes quiz on Thursday so keep up with what we are doing in class!!!  Remember to check edline for any missing notes!!

In our discussion about polygenic inheritance we watched a short Why tell me Why clip about why most babies are born with Blue eyes.  Here it is!

Tuesday's Daily Question and Wednesdays Open Notes Quiz

Daily Question From Tuesday (We did the first scenario and then I had you cross a homozygous recessive organism with a Heterozgote)

Yesterday's daily question just went through even more examples of punnett squres.  (See image above)

 **We also went through more of the directed reading focusing on the section "Modeling Mendel's Laws."  This led us into a discussion about doing test crosses and an introduction into making Pedigrees.  A test cross is used when you want to find out the genotype of an organism that has a dominant phenotype.  Remember, if an organism expresses the dominant phenotype, they could be either Homozygous dominant or heterozgyous.  To determine which they are, you cross them with a known homozygous recessive organism.  If ANY of their offpsring express the recessive trait, then that means the parent MUST have been heterozygous.  If ALL of their offpsring expresses the dominant trait, then that means the parent was most likely Homozygous dominant. 

Today's Open Notes quiz focused mostly on Modeling Mendel's Laws (punnett squares), but brought together everything we have talked about so far with this chapter.  This grade will be the last grade of this nine weeks.  I also discussed Extra credit options with most classes - stay tuned here and to edline for more details!!!!

Monday Monday........

       Friday we took the daily question quiz that focused on our understanding of the basics of heredity. Today we moved into being able to model Mendel's laws.  Why do we even care about alleles & genotypes and phenotypes and such..... so we can both predict the outcome of crosses with Punnett squares as well as look back and trace alleles with pedigrees.  Today's daily question was as follows:

**A Punnett square shows the possible GENOTYPES  of the offspring of a cross between two known parents

** To Set up a Punnett square – the genotypes of the parents go on the TOP and Side of the square

** Each allele has a 50% chance of being passed on the offspring.

** Draw a sample Punnett square of a cross between two heterozygous parents.

After this - we then moved into an example with a human trait

Achondroplasia is a genetic disorder of bone growth.

A=Allele for Achondroplasia

a = Allele for Normal Bone Growth

1st off: is Achondroplasia (Dwarfism) a dominant or recessive disorder? Well since i represented the allele with a Captial letter, we know it must be a DOMINANT disorder

Next: What is the GENOTYPE of someone who is HETEROZYGOUS for Achondroplaisa?

Aa and that person would have normal bone growth.

What is the PHENOTYPE of someone who is homozygous recessive?

They would nave NORMAL bone growth

Using a punnett square, find the chances that two people heterozygous for achondroplasia could have a normal child. There would be a 25% chance they would have a child WITH achondroplasia. See punnett square below

What does this MEAN then? That two dwarfs that are Heterozygous have a 25% chance of having an averaged sized child. Those of you who have followed Little People Big world can now see how this couple could have 2 children that were averaged size. What does that mean about THEIR genotypes?!?! They MUST be heterozygous. So EVERY time they have children, there is a 25% chance they will be average sized.

CONTENT for Thursday!!

We started the class with the following Daily Question:

In horses, trotter is dominant over pacer. A trotter is mated to a pacer. Over the course of several matings, 5 pacers are produced along with 4 trotters. What were the genotypes of each original parent?

To solve: first - What is the allele for the trotter trait (remember - an allele is a specific version of a gene. If the allele is dominant it is represented with a capital letter, if the allele is recessive it is represented by a lower case letter) In this case then - The allele for Trotter is T

Next: What is the allele for pacer trait? t

What would the genotype of a pacer be? tt (homozygous recessive)

What would the genotype of a trotter be? TT or Tt (homozygous dominant OR heterozygous)

NOW figure out the genotypes of the parents. Well - the pacer Parent HAS to be homozgyous recessive (tt), we know the Trotter has at least one dominant allele, but since they had a pacer offspring that means the trotter HAD to be carrying the pacer recessive allele as well. So..... Genotype of the parents are Tt and tt

Here was how i suggested you write the question in your notes to keep you focused on the question and not your neighbor or what time the bell rings or if you want to use the hall pass to roam around!!

After the daily question - and the "life lesson" in focusing - we reviewed some of the basics of genotype/phenotype terminology and moved into the next section "modeling mendels theory." In this we will be making punnett squares and pedigrees. To introduce it I had you read through the active reading of this section and start to get a feel for what a punnett square is and how it is set up. We will continue with this tomorrow. REMEMBER WE HAVE A DAILY QUESTION QUIZ TOMORROW!!!

Stay strong guys - we are almost at the last 9 weeks!!

Time to FOCUS!!!!

Alright - so MOST of you got a nice "heart to heart" on focusing today. I get it.... it is BEAUTIFUL outside...... HOT in here...... or "It's FIRST Pd Miss E... " "It's Just after Lunch Miss E...." "It's almost lunch Miss E....." "It's 9th Pd Miss E....." "But we are having cheering try outs today Miss E....." ENOUGH :) I can COMPLETELY sympathize with you when you have a MILLION things on your mind and the LAST thing you want to think about is school. Here's the deal..... this is where you are... so BE HERE :)!! I explained today that I am not that different than you in my mind's tendency to get distracted VERY easily. I had to learn to COPE with that though!

Today's daily question gave me a chance to show you how I would have gone about answering it. Instead of just reading it going.... "Oh Miss E, this is too difficult" take a step back and just focus on the question itself. Almost EVERY student I worked with one on one could figure it out once I got them to FOCUS on the question!! I know this is not going to work for everyone, but just writing the question and underlining/highlighting/ circling things as you go FORCES you to keep your mind on the problem and NOT on what Bob is doing next to you?!?!?! I showed some of you an example of my Genetics text book from college. (Keep in mind - I PAID for this, so please don't do this with YOUR books!!) Where you CAN do this though is in your notes. As I go back over notes - when i emphasize (or fist pump) something - UNDERLINE it, Circle it, Star it - SOMETHING. Even if you never look back on it, the fact that you consciously drew attention to it, means you are more likely to remember it.

So despite what you may think, learning didn't just come easy to me. I struggled a LOT but finally figured out that the only way I was going to get this was to teach myself to focus on what was in front of me and not ALL the many places my brain wanted to go.

This isn't a skill that you will set aside when you graduate either. Every meeting, doctors appointment, phone call I am on there is a piece of paper with me and I am jotting down random stuff that i may NEVER look at again, BUT..... it FORCES me to focus on what I am doing at THAT time. The example I gave you was taking my mom to the hospital. There was a TON on my mind but it was VERY important that i listen to everything the doctor said so I knew what we needed to do. I couldn't afford to let my mind go off in lala land at that point. Here is just a PORTION of my "focus doodling" as I guess i would call it.

I understand that some of you are lucky enough to have a naturally focused mind and just listening to me gets you through. That is great and I hope you can continue to learn to focus through all of the chaos that is life. But in reality, even the most focused of us are going to have a time when NO part of their brain wants to focus on what it needs to because daydreaming about someone or fuming about something someone put on facebook last night is SOOO much more entertaining than what you HAVE to do right now!!

Well.... that's enough of my "life lesson" rant for today. Stay posted for the actual CONTENT that we discussed today in another post :)

The Science of PTC

Yesterday we did the inventory of our traits. One of the traits was whether or not you can taste a chemical known as PTC. Those that can taste it KNEW it. It was very bitter. Here is a site that describes how and why some can taste PTC while others are not affected by it at all.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/traits/ptc/

Inventory of our traits day

Today's daily question was as follows:

If having a hitch-hiker's thumb is a recessive trait, and two parents with straight thumbs have a child with a hitch-hickers thumb, what does that mean about the genotypes of the parents and that of the offspring. (First determine the genotype of the child, then determine the genotype of the parents)

Alright - so - if it is a RECESSIVE trait, then we KNOW that the child MUST be homozygous recessive (hh) since he has a hitch-hickers thumb. Once we see that then we know that each parent had to have CARRIED the recessive allele. (It was not expressed though since each of them ALSO had to have the dominant allele in order to have a straight thumb) That means the parents were heterozygous for the trait (Hh)

We then started taking a look at our traits. Some of the traits we looked at were: Widows peak, tongue rolling, how we clasp our hands, dimple, freckles, etc....

What we SAW - the actual physical trait that we could see was our pheontoype. Based on those phenotypes we predicted what our genotypes were for each trait. If you showed the DOMINANT phenotype for a specific trait, there was TWO possible genotypes, either Homozygous Dominant (DD) OR Heterozygous (Dd). If, though, you showed the recessive trait, there was only ONE possible genotype, and that was homozygous recessive.

Good job today with all of this. Some classes then moved on to a concept map that looked at the relationship with the following terms: Heredity, alleles, genes, dominant, recessive, genotype, phenotype, Traits, parents, offspring.

Tuesday's Daily Question and discussion

Yesterday we had some time to finish up the "classwork quiz" and then looked at the directed reading and quiz for Mendel's theory. Today we started with a set of daily questions that reviewed this concept of genotype and phenotype:

*If someone exhibits a dominant phenotype – what are the possible genotypes they
could be? Dominant/Dominant TT (Homozygous dominant) or Heterozygous (Dominant/Recessive Tt)

*If someone exhibits the recessive phenotype, what are the possible genotypes they
could be? ONLY homozygous recessive (two recessive alleles) tt
*True or False: Dominant traits are more common in a population. Very Very False - being Dominant ONLY means that if it is present THAT is what is expressed. NOT that it is more common or "better" for instance. Having 6 fingers is a dominant trait. I don't know many people with 6 fingers on each hand.

After that we reviewed some of the notes on genotype vs phenotype and begin to make predictions of genotypes based on phenotypes with the widow's peak trait. This will lead us into an activity where we will be taking an inventory of our own traits starting tomorrow!

Thursdays Daily Questions and Discussion

It's been a while since we had a daily questions but here they were!!

Homologous Chromosomes each have different forms of a gene on them (one from your mom and one from your dad) These different "forms" are known as Alleles.

These can be either dominant or recessive. Those that are recessive are "Hidden" (Not expressed) if a dominant allele is present.

The two alleles an organism has for a specific trait is known as its Genotype (such as HH or Hh or hh). The actual characteristic that is has (the PHYsical appearance) is known as its PHENOtype

After that we reviewed our notes about Mendel, his experiments and moved in to how alleles are expressed and STARTED to predict genotypes based on phenotypes. For MOST classes we began the "class work quiz" but will finish that up on Monday at the start of the period. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure that you are where you need to be with this stuff. I have had a LOT of you "zoning" lately!

Looking at Mendel

Today we went through the first section and in to the second section of our chapter on heredity. We focused on Mendels importance. Rember - at the time Mendel came up with his discoveries, no one really cared because no one had any clue as to what DNA or genes were. So that's why the poor guy didn't get much credit for his discoveries until MUCH later. Some of the terms and concepts we focused on today were: Creating a Monohybrid Cross (A cross between two parents of contrasting traits), The formation of a "Hybrid" organism and then into basic terminoly about genes such as: Alleles, Dominant, Recessive, Genotype, Phenotype. Keep in mind that tomorrow we will PROBABLY have a "Class Work Quiz" on what we have gone over so far!!

Exams and heredity introduction

Today you guys recieved your tests back from meiosis and sexual reproduction. I am still working on the take home part of the test which was worth 21 points. I hope to have all these graded and back to you by tomorrow. I really wanted to go over this exam because the next chapter on heredity springs right from meiosis and I don't want you to close that door in your brain. I gave you a chapter packet today that you will refer to throughout the WHOLE chapter (that is why it is so large). Continue to check out this blog as we go through the rest of the year!!!

Conjoined Twins Video

I will be adding some longer clips or links for more information about conjoined twins! MANY of you were curious about this.

Identical Twins Video

Introduction to Heredity

Today we started our discussion on heredity. This invovlved some videos that discuss identical twins. Why did I show that? Well.... First off a LOT of you were asking about the difference between identical twins, paternal twins, conjoined twins, etc. So these showed a LITTLE about these. Also though, I want you guys to see that there is a LOT that goes into the traits we have. While ultimatly our genes are what code for our traits the cellular environment also has dramatic effects on gene expression. We'll see how this blog goes and it will be a way to communicate with me!! Here we go :)