Teacher’s Talk: Genetics (Day 2)

Today in class the students continued their previous experiments as well as beginning some new ones.

They continued their corn experiment by taking care of their corn this morning. Although we have seen no progress in plant growth yet, the students will continue to care for their plants until the plants are large enough for us to determine the frequency of the various phenotypes expressed.

They also did more work with their bean beetles today by setting up an experiments to determine what kind of bean the beetles preferred. The students were allowed to decide the own parameters for the experiment such as replacement of dead beetles, temperature, and how often they’ll be recording their observations.

Today we also did a simulation with Tribbles to demonstrate the expression of dominant and recessive traits. The students were given a list of five tribbles and their coat color and by crossing them they were to determine the nature of the coat color trait (dominant or recessive) and the genotypes of the parents.

The c. elegans experiment was also continued today. The students inoculated their petri dishes with the e. coli that will be incubated overnight before we introduce the c. elegans tomorrow.

They also did a second simulation with Mars Meloos to demonstrate incomplete dominance. The students were given a list of animals to breed and were asked to determine the inheritance pattern.