Unit 4 Reflection

     In the coin sex lab, we used coins to demonstrate the recombination of alleles. It also demonstrated how probability comes into play when determining an individuals genes, as just like you can't be completely sure if a coin will land heads or tails, you can't be completely sure what the genotype of your offspring will be. This lab showed Mendel's law of Segregation when the different alleles of genes were separated randomly, as they do during meiosis. We first used a monohybrid cross of a male and female to test the probability of having a male or female child, and we also crossed a homozygous non-bipolar person with a heterozygous carrier of bipolar disorder. These were both examples of autosomal inheritance. We also crossed two individuals to see if the offspring would be color blind, and x-linked recessive trait. Males are most likely to be color blind as females have a second X chromosome to mask the recessive allele. Last we did a dihybrid cross to see the hair and eye color of the offspring, and the expected phentoype was 9:3:3:1, and ours was similar with 10:3:2:1. We can see the probability of our offspring having a specific trait in real life, but we can't make a sold prediction, as according to Mendel's laws, the separation and recombination of alleles is random.

      This unit was all about sex and genetics.We learned about processes like mitosis and meiosis and the different types of reproduction. We also learned about different components of genetics, including how genes and alleles work and their significance. I personally enjoyed learning about genes, alleles, and punnett squares. It was more confusing for me to remember the details about mitosis and meiosis, so I need to take more time to study those concepts.

      I learned many new and interesting things over the course of this unit. Some of the concepts, like dominance, were a review, but other topics, like the different types of inheritance, were new. This unit definitely related to the real world/ daily life a lot, as many our traits are determined by genetics and processes learned in this unit, like meiosis. Doing the infographic also enforced a lot of these concepts and helped me have a broader understanding of all of them. It helped me recognize the main concepts of the unit. In the future I would like to learn more about the specifics of each chromosomes, and other cases like genetic mutation, which we didn't really touch on.

      After taking the VARK Questionnaire, these were my scores.

• Visual 1
• Aural 4
• Read/Write 7
• Kinesthetic 4

      I was really surprised with these results because I always thought that I was more of a visual learner, however according to my results, I learn the least visually. When studying for the upcoming test, I am going to take a more written approach than a visual one. I remember information that I see written down or that I write myself, so I might make some flashcards.