Week 2 Reflection

In studying genetics and inheritance, it has become clear to me that many of the genes passed down in the genotype are not clearly represented in the phenotype. The traits that are expressed are considered dominant, while those that are not seen are recessive. These alleles can be represented with a capital or lower case letter, representing its dominance. When these genes are being inherited, they form a certain combination of dominant and recessive alleles which dictate the traits in the phenotype. Earlier this week we performed a lab called Genetics with a Smile, with the purpose being for us to gain experience on how the different combinations of alleles come to form a being's appearance. In this lab, the students were given a list of possible traits, and were to flip a coin so that one of the options could be decided. The outcome of our lab is below. Dick Oliver is a male human with an oval face, blast shaped eyes, curly hair, pointed ears, up-facing nose, olive-tone face, red eyes, long hair, freckles, an orange nose, teal ears, and a thick, happy smile. Furthermore, this week we learned about sex-linked inheritance. We were taught how women can be carriers or simply have/not have the trait. We also learned about how when two equally dominant traits are combined in an offspring things like codominance and incomplete  dominance occur. This past week, I have become much more familiar with the topic that determines my traits; whether analyzing the work of Gregor Mendel and his pea plants, or calculating the probability of a specific trait appearing in a phenotype of an offspring.

Arman Sani #bloggin