Biology is about studying life, and since you're alive, it's really about you. Hopefully you'll find this very interesting!
Seek to improve your learning by polishing each project (page) in your notebook, until you've earned at least two stamps on each!

Monday, January 30, 2012

30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 Lots of Punnett Square practice!!!

Solve the puzzles, dilemmas, or just answer the questions!  We'll be chatting about this in class on Friday, so make sure you HAVE ATTEMPTED EVERY PROBLEM BEFORE CLASS ON FRIDAY!!!

Here's how your classmates solved the problems:

29 Codominance and Incomplete Dominance

Goals:  1)  Get more comfortable with genotyping and choosing good letters
2)  master the difference between incomplete and codominance

Check your work, hopefully your capitals are similar
BB, WW, BW
WW, RR, RW
CC, SS, CS
TT, SS, TS
BW, BB, WW
a,c,e
b,d

And now use this knowledge to expand your understanding of blood types (and perhaps go above and beyond?)

Thursday, January 26, 2012

28 FISH VIDEO

As you watch the Fish video, think about the genetics involved with each species, and how over generations certain traits might help fish survive, or at least live a little better...

How did those mud skippers figure out the air transfer (and do genes encode this information?)
What about the fish that climb waterfalls?  How do they know to do that?

Also, complete four sets of 3 questions each. (KWL style)
What did I already know?   What did I learn?  What do I still have a question about?
What did I already know?   What did I learn?  What do I still have a question about?
What did I already know?   What did I learn?  What do I still have a question about?
What did I already know?   What did I learn?  What do I still have a question about?

Oh, and don't forget to feed the fish!

Thursday, January 19, 2012

26 27 Oompa Loompa Genetics

These are some quick exercises to make sure you have the crossing patterns mastered (so we can ask even better questions!)

Pay close attention to how the dominance patterns affect the probabilities in the offspring...

Here's the link to the worksheet if you need a copy

Here's how your classmates solved the problems:

23, 24, 25 Dihybrid crosses (23 & 24 are Guinea Pigs, 25 is Hair&Eye Color)

If you need a clearer picture of the handout, try here

So Mendel looked at his plants and wondered if the traits were related to each other, or if they were completely independent...  So he tracked plants that were hybrids of two traits (say Tt for tall/short and Yy for yellow/green seeds).

If the traits are truly independent, then whether or not you get a Y or a y has nothing to do with getting a T or t...(it's independent)

So a TtYy parent could produce:
TY
Ty
tY
ty
in equal ratios.  He then crossed the TtYy with a TtYy and made a really big Punnett square with two hybrids (A DIHYBRID CROSS!)
and found you could get
TTYY, TtYY, ttYY, TTYy, TtYy, ttYy, TTyy, Ttyy and ttyy in the expected phenotypic ratios of 9:3:3:1 of TALLYELLOW, TALLgreen, shortYELLOW, shortgreen.

Now you'll need to practice this a bit with the guinea pigs worksheet...

Check the links below for genetics tutorials, or find your own on youtube (search for dihybrid cross tutorial)

20, 21, 22 Easter Eggs!

Can you predict the "offspring" if you know the genetics(egg half color) of the parents?

Today we'll be focusing on INCOMPLETE DOMINANCE.

Fasten in the guidelines, and as a group predict the contents of your first egg!

After that, do four more :-)

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

16, 17, 18, 19 Inheritance: Practice

Grab the handouts, fasten them in your notebook, and get really good at using Punnett Squares for predicting inheritance...

Want more help, or just the worksheets?  Search for "bikini bottom" at sciencespot.net

*(and yes, the answers are there too if you want to double check your work...)

Thursday, January 12, 2012

14, 15 Gleeps!!! (beans and Punnett Squares)

If you need to learn more about Punnett Squares, try this link:
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/mendelian_genetics/problem_sets/monohybrid_cross/01t.html

On pages 14&15, fasten the GLEEPS handout.
Work in pairs
Once you have finished question 1, test your "hypothesis" with the beans
Beans & cups are on the lab materials cart. (each group needs 2 cups, 20 black and 20 white beans)

After checking with Mr. C, enter your data on the class chart
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiHFMOszKcWIdFV0MllUSHQ3WUh5UlFqQzFDSXlPbFE

For question 3 - use a neighbor or the data in yellow on the class data sheet
For question 4 - use the data in yellow on the class data sheet


:-)

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

10,11,12,13 Investigating Inherited Traits

There are a lot of good questions here, start with the activity of coin flipping (halfway down p.11)
Write down your coin flips, genotype, and phenotype on p.12
Draw the picture on p.12
Now answer all the questions on pp.10-13 :-)

9 Genetics Foldable

8 key words on the outside - one must know these words to discuss genetics!

Inside (3 things each)
(1) Definition
(2) Visual
(3) Example

Pages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

Notebook setup, see picture below!

Make sure you complete, sign, and have your parents sign on page 8

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69142047@N02/6679221605/

Welcome to 2012

Happy Spring (well almost...)

This semester we'll be learning about how life reproduces itself, and the different (or similar) ways that life goes about doing it's thing(s).

Check below for details about the notebook requirements.

:-)