Baby Face: Combining Gamates to Create New Offspring

1. Students will show how a person’s chromosome number is halved by the process of meiosis.
2. Students will simulate the combining of gametes during fertilization.
3. Students will determine the traits passed from parent to offspring.
4. Students will see the various ways that traits can be inherited – complete dominance, incomplete dominance, codominance, epistasis, and polygenic inheritance.

The goal of this lesson is for students to gain a better understanding of meiosis and how random fertilization of gametes has the potential to create an almost endless variety of offspring.

Length of time needed:  1 class period (88 mins)

This lesson was written by Melanie Kennedy.

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