Final Report - Genetic Traits

International Genetics Project Analysis

Hi, we're Adam McKinley and Christopher Stade from Werribee Secondary College in Victoria, Australia. We studied genetics as part of our Science Program in Year 9. This year, our class did the Genetic Traits Survey as part of the genetics topic. Our class was the only one in our school which collected information. Mr. O'Neil allocated each of us to a class and we pooled our results at the end.

We calculated the percentage of dominant and recessive phenotypes in the population surveyed and discussed the results. When we saw the final results of the International Survey we were very surprised to see that in some cases the dominant trait was less common than the recessive trait. We had only been studying genetics for a couple of weeks and we assumed that the dominant feature would be the most common. We discussed this 'problem' and learned that whilst a trait may be dominant to others, it may not be as abundant - we learned about 'wild type'.

We did not find many colour blind people even though we surveyed over 450 people at our school. We talked about the low numbers of colour blind people compared with other traits and the high numbers of males who were affected. We used family histories to learn how sex-linked conditions like colour blindness are inherited.

We learned a lot from the experience and we had lots of fun and would recommend the project to everyone.

Regards, Chris and Adam