February 26

Meiosis Baby Project: A Game of Chance 🧬👶

📅 Assigned: February 26
📅 Due: February 27

In this fun and interactive activity, you and a partner simulated how traits are inherited from parents to offspring using coin flips to represent genetic variation. This activity helped reinforce how meiosis leads to genetic diversity in living organisms!

🔬 What You Did:

1️⃣ Determined Baby’s Gender

• Since males carry both X and Y chromosomes, the coin flip determined if your baby would be a boy (Y) or girl (X).

2️⃣ Inherited Traits Through Coin Flipping

• Flipped coins to determine which alleles your baby inherited from each parent.

• Heads (H) = Dominant allele, Tails (T) = Recessive allele.

• Recorded the genotype (genetic makeup) and phenotype (physical trait) for:

  • Hair & eye color

  • Widow’s peak, cleft chin, and dimples

  • Earlobes, freckles, and eyelashes

  • Tongue rolling ability

3️⃣ Created a Baby Birth Certificate & Portrait

• Used the inherited traits to draw a portrait of your baby.

• Completed a birth certificate with the baby’s name, birth date, and parent names.

4️⃣ Analyzed Results & Answered Questions

• Calculated the probability of having a male or female child.

• Explained how traits pass through generations and why some traits appear even if parents don’t express them.

• Discussed sex-linked traits like colorblindness and how they are inherited differently in males and females.

💡 Why This Matters:

This project demonstrated how meiosis and genetic inheritance lead to variation in populations. Every person is unique because of the way chromosomes combine during fertilization, making this one of the key processes in biology!

✅ Reminder: Your completed project is due tomorrow, February 27—make sure your baby’s traits are recorded and all questions are answered! 👶🔬✨