Student Exploration: Inheritance

Name: ______________________________________ Date: ________________________ Student Exploration: Inheritance Vocabulary: acquired trait, asexual reproduction, clone, codominant traits, dominant trait, inherit, offspring, recessive trait, sexual reproduction, trait Prior Knowledge Questions (Do these BEFORE using the Gizmo.) Johnny and Isabelle are a young couple expecting their first child. Both have blue eyes, tattoos, and green hair. Which features do you think their child is most likely to have? Blue eyes Tattoos Green hair Features like eye color, skin tone, height, and hair color are called trai ts . Wh at traits do you think children inherit , or receive , from their parents? Gizmo Warm-up In the Inheritance Gizmo you can create and breed aliens on an imaginary planet. Select Asexual reproduction. During asexual reproduction, a single parent produces offspring (children). Click Create alien and create your own alien. Describe its traits in the Parent row of the table : Alien Body type Skin Color Antenna shape Tattoo green straight none green straight none Medium Parent Offspring Drag the parent over to the Parent 1 space and press Reproduce . Fill in the O ffspring traits on the table above . What traits medium appear to be inherited from the parent? Get the Gizmo ready: Select Sexual reproduction Activity A: . Inherited traits Drop all remaining aliens (if any) in the Exit hole. Question: Are all parental traits inherited by offspring? Observe : In sexual reproduction , two parents pass traits to the offspring. Create and breed a variety of alien s . Record your observations on a separate sheet of paper. Form a hypothesis : Which traits do you think are passed down from alien parents to their offspring, and which traits are not? Explain. ____ he skin color and he shape of anennas _ _________________________________ Experiment : Set the F ood supply to 2 bushes . Create two identical parents with thick bodies, green skin, curly antennas, and triangle tattoos. Make two offspring and record their traits in the table below. Offspring Body type Skin Color Antenna shape Tattoo Offspring 1 thin green curly none Offspring 2 thin green curly none Analyze : Compare the offspring traits to the parent traits. Which traits were passed from parents to offspring? ______ skin antennas and curly _____ _______________ Which traits were not passed down? _____ body type and tattoo _________________________________ Investigate further : Create offspring with a few different levels of Food supply . How does food supply affect the body type of offspring? _______ less food they are more thin and more food they are fate __________________________________________________________________ Think and discuss : Suppose a human child had a mother with dyed-pink hair and a father who was missing a finger (lost in an accident). Would the child inherit these traits? Explain. Get the Gizmo ready: Clear all parents and offspring from the Gizmo by dropping them into the Activity B: Skin color Exit hole. Create a green alien and a pink alien . Question: How is alien skin color inherited? Predict : What do you think the offspring of a green alien and pink alien will look like? ______ Experiment : Test your prediction with the Gizmo. What did you find? __________________ Predict : What do you think will happen when you breed two green-andpink spotted aliens? __ recessive because it is not only going to be one colo r ________________________________________________________ ______ _________ Experiment : Follow the steps below . (You may have already done the first step or two.) Place a green alien and a pink alien in the locations for Parent 1 and Parent 2 . Breed these parents twice. Drag both offspring to the spaces below the Nest . Drag the two green -and-pink offspring up to become the new Parent 1 and Parent 2 . Breed these aliens 10 times. Record how many times each skin color occurred in the ir offspring .( For example, i f there were 2 green offspring, write “2” below “ green .”) Skin color Green Green and pink Pink Number of offspring 4 4 2 Analyze : Look at the results of your experiment. What kind of skin did most of the offspring have? _____ green/pink _______________________ Did all of the offspring have green and pink skin? ______ none _ _________________ ____ Think and discuss : For a codominant trait, do the offspring of identical parents always look like the parents? Explain your answer. Get the Gizmo ready: Clear all aliens by dropping them into the Exit Activity C: hole. Antenna shape Create two aliens – one with straight antenna and one with curly antenna. Question: How is alien antenna shape inherited? Predict : What do you think will happen when you breed an alien with straight antenna to an alien with curly antenna? ________ they will have straight _____________________________________________ Experiment : Test your prediction using the Gizmo. Create at least 5 offspring. What did you notice ? _________ parents with straight antennas are dominant because the offspring got i __________________________________________________________ Analyze : Sometimes when two traits are combined, one is a dominant trait and the other is a recessive trait .I f both traits are present, only the dominant trait is seen in the offspring. Which trait is dominant, straight antenna or curly? ____ straigh _______________________ Which trait is recessive? ______ curly _____________________ Investigate further : Take two of the straight-antenna offspring and breed them together to produce 10 new offspring. Record the an tenna type of each offspring. What happened? ______________ all the offspring came out with straight _______________________________________ Did the recessive trait disappear? _________ no _______________________________ How can a trait skip a generation? _______________________________________ Draw conclusions : For a dominant/recessive trait, do the offspring of identical parents always look like the parents? Explain. _ it can skip generations but they will just be Compare : How do the offspring of two parents that reproduce sexually differ from the offspring of a single parent that reproduces asexually?