Unit 4 Reflection

Unit 4 was about sex. It went into the details of the sex cycle, genetics, and how genes affect our daily lives. The essential understandings were how do genes affect our physical traits and why is sex great. Through the genetics infographic, we learned about genetics and the different types of genetic inheritance. The coin sex lab gave a great explanation of how genetics work and how to use probability to predict different types of crosses, such as autosomal, x-linked, monohybrid, and dyhybrid crosses. The vodcast on meiosis gave a basic understanding of how meiosis and mitosis are different and the different steps of meiosis. I hard a hard time at first of understanding Mendel's 2 laws and how chromosomes split, but I understood better once I had a visual representation from the diagram and the passing on my genes mini lab. I easily picked up on the different types of genetic crosses and the different abnormalities that can occur since we learned the basics of them in 7th grade biology.
After taking the VARK questionnaire, my results were 7 Visual, 2 Aural, 6 Reading Writing, and 9 Kinesthetic. The results were what I expected because I generally learn either by watching someone or through using logic (not in the test) and examples. Currently I read over the notes and redo the CFU's to test myself, and answer the vodcasts my self to truly test weather I can understand the content. I can use more visual techniques such as notecards and color-coding concepts in order to properly absorb them while continuing my same studying ways. This will play to my learning styles as reading/writing but also the visual and kinesthetic aspects.

Genetics Infographic

Here is the link to the published version of this infographic (larger version):

Why is Sex Great Infographic

Coin Sex Lab Analysis

In this lab, we asked the question of "how is probability used to predict what our offspring will be?" We flipped coins marked with different alleles of genes to simulate Mendel's laws of segregation and assortment and model dihybrid crosses, x -linked inheritance, autosomal dominance crosses, and the sex of offspring. Coins served as a good model for genes because there was a 50% chance of getting either gene, which showed the two laws and used probability to find actual ample sized results. During meiosis, the chromosomes split, which is represented by the flipping of the coin, showing the random probability of having either allele. Through recombination, the genes are combined and we can find the genotype and phenotype of an organism. This results in many pairings, some homozygous and some heterozygous. The phenotypic ratio for dihybrid double heterozygous crosses is 1:3:3:9, with 9 being the phenotype both dominant, the 3's as 1 recessive and 1 dominant, and the 1 being both recessive. Our actual results through the flipping of coins garnered the result of 3:1:2:10. The differences in the results of the data is due to the representation of the Law of Independent Assortment and the random probability of getting any phenotype, though some have higher chances due to dominant and recessive alleles. The limit of probability comes from the randomness of gene separation and the ability for genes to mutate and cross with each other, which creates new, unaccounted alleles. These changes cannot be predicted by punnet squares and probability. This understanding of the probability of crosses can help predict what genes and traits my children will have in the future and what unknown traits I may have right now,