2005), which means that a typical classroom is likely to have at least one child who doesn't know that the person they call "Dad" isn't their biological father. Several genetic studies, mostly in European and North American populations, have found that the rate of this "paternal discrepancy" is about 4 percent of all children (Bellis et al. The most common cause of this is a woman having an affair with someone other than her husband or partner. However, some children are not the biological offspring of the people they think they are. It is possible to use accurate genetic traits for a classroom exercise, such as blood types or DNA markers. I don't think this is a good way to teach genetics. More of your students will reach this conclusion with each bogus genetic trait that you add to the lesson. Results from a large number of studies show that about 11 percent of your students will be R children of two L parents if they understand the genetics lesson correctly, they will think that either they were secretly adopted, or Mom was fooling around and Dad isn't their biological father. Let's say you tell your students that arm folding is a genetic trait, with the allele for right forearm on top (R) being dominant to left forearm on top (L). However, there is another problem with teaching inaccurate human genetics. They can learn about polygenic traits, incomplete penetrance, and environmental effects in later biology classes, at the same time they're learning the quantum model of electrons in their physics classes. Teachers might argue that using traits like tongue rolling and arm folding to teach genetics is a useful " lie-to-children," an oversimplification that is useful for teaching beginners, like teaching physics students that electrons are particles that rotate around the nucleus of an atom in little circular orbits.
#EXAMPLES OF DOMINANT TRAITS MANUALS#
It is an embarrassment to the field of biology education that textbooks and lab manuals continue to perpetuate these myths. A quick search in the standard reference on human genetics, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man ( OMIM), makes it clear that most of these traits do not fit the simple genetic model. Other traits were shown from the very beginning to not fit the simple genetic model, but somehow textbook authors decided to ignore this. Some traits, such as tongue rolling, were originally described as fitting a simple genetic model, but later research revealed them to be more complicated. It is true that most people fall into two categories, right arm on top or left arm on top, but the very first study on the subject (Wiener 1932) clearly demonstrated that there is little or no genetic influence on this trait: pairs of right-arm parents are just about as likely to have right-arm children as are pairs of left-arm parents. For example, students are asked to fold their arms, then told that the allele for having the right forearm on top is dominant.
In other cases, the trait really does fall into two categories, but it isn't determined by genetics. This was clearly shown in the very first paper on the genetics of hitchhiker's thumb (Glass and Kistler 1953), yet 60 years later, teachers still ask students which of the two kinds of thumb they have. In fact, the angle of the thumb ranges continuously, with most thumbs somewhere in the middle. For example, students are told that they either have a hitchhiker's thumb, which bends backwards at a sharp angle, or a straight thumb. In some cases, the trait doesn't even fall into the two distinct categories described by the myth. Rolling your tongue is not dominant to non-rolling, unattached earlobes are not dominant to attached, straight thumbs are not dominant to hitchhiker's thumb, etc. Most of the common, visible human traits that are used in classrooms do NOT have a simple one-locus, two-allele, dominant vs. Unfortunately, what textbooks, lab manuals and web pages say about these human traits is mostly wrong. Best of all, these data don't require microscopes, petri dishes, or stinky fly food. Students can easily collect data on several different traits and learn about genes, dominant and recessive alleles, maybe even Hardy-Weinberg proportions. Just about every biology student has, in one class or another, been asked to roll their tongue, look at their earlobes, or check their fingers for hair. A fun way to teach the basics of genetics is to have students look at traits on themselves.
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