Unit 4 Reflection

          This unit was all about genetics and inheritance. We learned about different types of inheritance, genetically linked diseases, and Punnett squares. Some themes and essential understandings of this unit are using the Punnett squares to predict your offpsring's phenotype and genotype, understanding meiosis and mitosis, knowing the different phases of the cell cycle, and learning about dominant and recessive traits. Some of my strengths in this unit was understanding dominance and Punnett squares. A weakness of mine is memorizing and knowing what happens in each phase of the cell cycle. A success of mine is being able to know the difference between mitosis and meiosis after studying it for a long time. A setback of mine is when I had trouble learning dihybrid crosses using Punnett squares. I learned how gene linkage and multifactorial diseases work and how Mendel realized how great sex is. I learned a lot of things from doing the Infographic. I really got to understand meiosis and the different diseases that are x-linked and autosomal. I want to learn more in depth about sickle cell anemia and other autosomal inherited diseases. An unanswered question I still have is what other types of multifactorial diseases are there. I wonder about how scientists will gather more information to further advance our knowledge in genetics.

          I have a multimodal learning preference, but I scored highest in the categories kinesthetic and aural. I scored a 5 in both those categories, a 4 in visual, and a 2 in reading/writing. My results surprised be a bit because I didn't know that I was a kinesthetic learner. I thought I would score highest in visual because I thought I learned best visually. In order to play to my learning strengths, I will listen to vodcasts and look for examples in the textbook.

                            

  

Coin Sex Lab Relate and Review

          In this lab, we flipped coins with either dominant or recessive alleles of different genes on each side to find out the genotype and phenotype of a child. We found the probability of what the children's phenotype would be if they had certain genotypes and then made a hypothesis based on the information. The coins served as a model for genetics concepts because it showed how randomly the chromosomes split and distributed themselves during meiosis and how they recombine themselves into new pairs. During our dihybrid cross, our results matched perfectly with our expected results. We expected that we would get nine individuals with brown hair and brown eyes, three individuals with blonde hair and brown eyes, three individuals with brown hair and blue eyes, and one individual with blonde hair and blue eyes. When we crossed, we got exactly what we expected. Our results matched the expected results perfectly because the Law of Probability states that one will get the most probable outcome; however, others may not get the expected result because there is never a hundred percent chance that they will get what is expected. We also did a monohybrid cross. We crossed a heterozygous individual with a homozygous recessive individual. Our monohybrid cross showed the chances of having a child with bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is autosomal inheritance, while something like color blindness is x-linked inheritance. Using probability to predict our offspring's traits are limited to some point. Although it shows the likeliness of the offspring having those certain genes/traits, it isn't completely accurate a hundred percent of the time. Understanding this relates to my life because later when I'm older, I can use a Punnett square to predict what my child's genotype and phenotype will be. I will be able to find the probability of whether my children will be bald, or have a genetic disease.

Genetics Infographic: Why is Sex So Great?