Spring 2005 Final Reports

Granville Intermediate School
Granville, Ohio, USA

Our class was able to complete the project as it was designed because we were able to record the traits easily. The most important idea was we learned how to predict traits that parents would give to their offspring. If someone would ask us about the project’s outcome, We would answer by saying we could easily complete this project with no difficulties. If we were to do this project again we would survey more people. If we were to speak to the project leader we would suggest that there should more traits. Our project did not our expectations because we were hoping to get more people surveyed. Our procedures were we split up the different traits then added up the recessive and dominant traits then put it into a grand total. The frequency range for the domain traits was 19%. The relationship between the domain trait and how often it occurred is it is not always the domain trait is the biggest one. We learned that red green color blindness is mostly in males because the trait is fond in the X chromosome.

Colegio Albania
Mushaisa, La Guajira, Columbia

Was your class able to complete the project as it was designed? Explain why or why not.

Yes, our Project is complete as it was designed because we work hard and in group.

What was the most important new idea or scientific procedure you learned by doing this project?

That we all have different genetics traits and that we are classified in two groups. The Dominants and the Recesives.

If someone asked you about the outcome of the project, how would you answer?

That in total in my class we have more Recesive than Dominants.

If you had the chance to do this project again, what would you do differently?

That we will evaluate the whole school and not only my class.

If you could speak to the project leader, what suggestions for improvement would you offer?

I will suggest more characteristics or traits to evaluate to make the Project more interesting.

Did the results of your project match your expectations? Explain why or why not.

No, our expectetions didnt match because we thought that we will have more dominants than recesive and that in our class we thought that we were cone a prove the dominant traits and we couldnt because they wasnt.

What procedures did you use to analyze the large quantity of data?

We were three people evaluating the specifics traits in the 2 different classes that are in our school in 8th grade and we divide the different objectives.

What was the frequency range (highest% minus lowest%) of the dominant traits ?

54%

Is there a relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance? Explain.

In some of them it appears but in most of them they are more recesive than dominants.

What did you learn about the way red-green color blindness is inherited in humans?

That it is recesive.

Johnston Middle School
Johnston, Iowa, USA

We used a spreadsheet to calculate the totals for each trait observed, and we graphed this data. We computed the following ratios of dominant to recessive traits: earlobes 2:1, white forelock 0.12:1, dimples 0.6:1, thumbs 1:1, pinkies 1.3:1, mid-digit hair 0.5:1, colorblindness 24:1. We expected to get a 3:1 ratio of dominant to recessive traits like Gregor Mendel found. This ratio did not occur with this data. The closest was the free:attached earlobes. We thought that our worldwide data set was too small and entire continents were not represented. Perhaps this 3:1 ratio would be more likely to occur if a larger group were sampled. We were most surprised by the white forelock data. This is an example where most people carry the recessive, not the dominant trait. We found that genotypes for dominant traits could be homozygous dominant (DD) or heterzygous dominant (Dd) and genotypes for recessive traits would be homozygous recessive (dd). Four percent of the participants were color blind. The verified color blind data showed 53% to be female and 47% to be male.

Istituto Castriota, Italy

We beg your pardon, we send this second final report because we have forgotten to say that "castriotino" is our school magazine... and any students coming from our school is a castriotino.

We have analyzed data set with Excel and we have found no Mendel’s ratio. Maybe it is due to the small sample that is non representative of the world population or we have to think the data are not true. Everything is possible. However we have appreciated the project because the core is to test scientific facts. We suggest to try with other human, animal or plant traits.

See you everybody, now we are on vacations on the beach. At last.

Nido de Aguilas
Santiago, Chile

The Worldwide Genetics Project was in some way our introduction to the unit of genetics. There were various purposes for this project, but the main one was to realize that in many occasions dominant traits are not always more common than recessive traits. The hypothesis developed from my class was that dominant traits should occur more frequently than the recessive traits. It is important to consider that the probabiltiy of inheriting a dominant trait is higher than for a recessive trait since there are more possible genotypes that would result in the expression of the dominant trait. This was proved by Gregor Mendel after crossing two hybrid pea plants and discovering that 75% of the offspring would express the dominant trait.

After completing the survey, the class discovered that the dominant traits are NOT always the most common. For example, the white forelock trait, which was supposed to be dominant, had the opposite results: only one person in the total of 69 surveyed showed this trait. Another example was the dimples traits, since once again the recessive trait was more common.

There are various reasons why the recessive trait may be more common than the dominant trait on some occassions. One reason why this may be produced is because of mating preferences. This is shown in the honey creeper example (from our evolution unit) in which the more brightly colored birds were more attractive to females so they would reproduce and pass on the trait to new generations. Another possible option can be caused by the environment. For example, in Africa many people show the recessive trait of sickle-cell anemia. In some ways this is a negative trait, but in this particular situation it helps people by protecting them from malaria, so they once more pass on this recessive gene.
There are different ways in which this project could be improved. Maybe the results would have been different if more people from the all over the world would have been surveyed. Another quite considerable improvement could be that the students shouldn't be able to survey family members since probably their traits would be very similar to each others. In conclusion, the Genetics Project was of great help for understanding the inheritance of genetic traits.

-Written by Nassam E., edited by Ms. Wiley

South Vienna Middle School
South Vienna, Ohio

First, we would like to say that we enjoyed participating in and completing this project. It was interesting to read about all of the other schools who were paricipating from around the world. We would have enjoyed seeing pictures of these classes or at least the students' schools.
The project was designed in a way that we were able to understand and complete it easily. Before we looked at the traits that we were required to poll, we predicted that the majority of our class and the other classes from around the world would exhibit dominance for each trait. To analyze the data, there were stations set up around the room and you were required to calculate and answer questions for each trait. After analyzing the data it was interesting to observe that the dominant trait does not reflect the majority of the population. Using all the data; only ear lobes, pinky and colorblindness reflected dominance and we found this contradicted our predictions. The lowest percentage of dominace was for white forelock at 11% and the highest percentage was for normal color vision at 96%, so we calculated the frequency range for dominance to be 85%. The other traits that were polled show that the majority of the population exhibits the recessive trait. For future studies, it would be beneficial for more schools to participate to get a better picture of worldwide dominant/recessive trait percentages.

Thank you,
South Vienna Middle School
South Vienna, Ohio
8th grade Science classes