Apologia Biology: More Genetics

We finally finished the PTC Genetics activity the girls had begun weeks ago.  The class tested folks at church and then took home PTC paper to conduct more tests. Naturally, the girls forgot to collect more data.  This activity was consequently postponed.  We spent three classes working on DNA.  Today, we dug out the lab papers and finished calculating the population frequencies. Basically, dominant tasters should appear more frequently than non tasters.

Next we tackled genetic conditions and pedigrees.  We looked at Queen Victoria's pedigree to understand the convention for writing the symbols.  Then we tackled Woody Guthrie's pedigree for Huntington's Disease with this worksheet.  The girls became familiar with the pedigree format.  Then,  they did a Karyotype activity online before we looked at Trisomy 21 karyotes.  Next we did the dihybrid cross on Punnett square from Apologia Experiment 8.1.  (Older edition and 8.2 in the newer edition.) We're going to test blood.  Before, I wanted to have the class do a dihybrid cross for Meg's parents, one of whom is AB+ and another is O+.  Here are the crosses and the girls working on the karyote online.  I ordered A Blood type simulation kit and Eldon blood test cards.  The girls tested their blood; one student cross contaminated hers.  Live and learn.  I hadn't used the cards before--just bottles of sera.  Recently, I had only used simulated blood owing to school rules.  So, next time, we'll try the test again and do a simulation before we repeat these tests with the young children in the Anatomy class.