Yesterday we had an activity where we had to create a punnet square through randomly choosing different ranges of letters and use that to design a zombie. We had 3 different ranges of letters we had to choose from, an example is SS, Ss, ss. We chose one for the mother and one for the father. Then we put that into the punnet square to find out the variation of the gene is more likely for the child.
We decided which physical variation the zombie had between 2 options. If the letters with more capitals were more dominant, you’d choose the dominant variation. If the recessive had more, you’d choose the recessive variation.
Gene: A section of DNA which codes for a particular trait.
Allele: Different variations of the same gene.
Phenotype: Physical appearance.
Genotype: the two inherited alleles.
The point of filling out punnet squares is to give you a fair idea on the probability of what traits your child will have. The punnet squares did work as we did them right, however, it wouldn’t work if you did the wrong letters or put lower cases in front of capital letters.