Students investigate sickle cell anemia to teach the principles of inheritance, genetic diagnostics, and bioethics.

This resource is a simulation that models the way fish and other organisms live in nature. Students will learn about the relationships between many different aspects of fish life: genes, traits, variation, survival and reproduction.

This lesson complements the film The Biology of Skin Color and discusses variation in human skin color and polygenic inheritance. In Part 1 of this activity, a simple mathematical model illustrates an idealized relationship between the number of genes involved in a trait and the number of phenotypes derived from the combination of alleles. In Part 2, students learn about the methods by which geneticists identify skin-color genes and estimate heritability. Finally, in Part 3, students learn how geneticists analyze genetic variations to trace an individual’s ancestry. Students draw conclusions about the predominant ancestry of two different individuals by comparing their genetic profiles against real allele frequency data.

Students will have a chance to try to determine species through a series of experiments. To test the definition of species, students will cross several varieties of plants with fast grow Brassica rapa plants and observe the results of these crosses.

Anchoring Phenomenon: Identical twins have the same DNA yet one was diagnosed with breast cancer and the other was not?? One about diabetes? Unit Essential Question: Why are some people diagnosed with diabetes and breast cancer while others are not?

Students analyze the results of genetic crosses between stickleback fish with different traits in this hands-on activity.

In this video students will visit a wheat field to learn about plant breeding, inheritance and the use of Punnett Squares for making predictions.

In this exercise, students will use StarGenetics, a software tool that simulates mating experiments, to analyze the nature and mode of inheritance of specific genetic traits.