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