Lab 2 Dragons and Flies

Lab 2
This lab synopsis will cover some components of genetic inheritance, such as genotypes and phenotypes, alleles, and dominant or recessive traits. I will also briefly discuss the importance of genetic inheritance on human history.
First off it is important that we define some key terms regarding genetic inheritance;
1. Genotype Refers to what genes belong to what traits. Letters are often assigned to specific genes. Genotypes were seen clearly in the dragon lab where certain letters designated whether the dragon had wings, horns, legs or even what color it was!
2. Phenotype The phenotype is the outward appearance of the genotype. Such as what color eyes someone has, or a widow’s peak or their finger length is even a phenotype. Phenotypes were seen in both labs but in the fly lab was a bit more realistic, the phenotypes were long wings or vestigial wings.
3. Allele Alleles are alternative forms of a gene located in the same position on a chromosome, typically depicted by letters of the alphabet. This was shown in the fly lab where the wing type was depicted by the letters L and l.
4. Cross crossing over is the process in which two non-sister chromatids break off a piece and those pieces reconnect with the other. Crossing over means that the offspring will receive a different set of specific genetic instructions than the mother and father did. I have a real life example of this, my mother and father both have brown hair and brown eyes, they have four children, three of us have brown hair and brown eyes and my brother came out with platinum blonde hair and blue eyes! My mom tried to take him back to the hospital because she really thought he was not oursJ the doctor discovered that both my parents fathers have blonde hair and light colored eyes so both my parents carry the heterozygous genotype for blonde hair and light eyes.
Crosses are also what is depicted in the punnett square.
5. Dominant Dominant traits in alleles will express themselves over recessive traits. In the dragon lab this was shown when changing the traits such as the horns, if there was one H it dominated the h and made the dragon have horns.
6. Recessive Recessive alleles will only express its phenotypic result in the homozygote. This was depicted in the fly lab with the homozygous vestigial winged fly.

These two labs gave a fun way of seeing the effects of genetic inheritance in our lives. Our parents each give us their genes and our phenotypes depend on whether they have homozygous dominant genotypes meaning they possess two identical alleles, homozygous recessive meaning they possess two recessive alleles or heterozygous meaning they have one dominant and one recessive allele. Receiving these genes affects us in ways that we are aware of, such as eye color, widow’s peak, height and even our earlobes. They also have to do with genetic disorders in humans. It is very important for all of us to know our genetic history so that we can be aware of any genetic disorders in our lineage so that we can better plan for the future.











This is the final image of the fly lab in which two heterozygus fly genotypes were put into a punnett's square.




This was the final image I got after making the two dragons have the same phenotype.
I feel that this lab was very useful in addition to chapter 20 in our books in teaching us how genotypes affect Phenotypes.