Making Babies: Blood Types Lab printable pdf download

Making Babies: Blood Types Lab

MATERIALS:

3 cups: Label 1 for Mom, 1 for Dad, and 1 for Baby

4 beads: 1 each of red and white in the “Mom” cup, and 1 each of blue and white in the “Dad” cup

INTRODUCTION:

This is a role-playing exercise for a team of two or three. If only two play, one of the “parents”

must keep the “baby” records.

The object of this exercise is for Mom and Dad to produce 100 babies (a do-it-yourself population

explosion!), and to discover a pattern in the random inheritance of genes by the babies.

Mom and Dad are both heterozygous for the trait of “Blood Type.” That is, each parent carries

two different alleles (“forms of the gene”) for blood type: a RED bead for the blood type A allele, and a

WHITE bead for blood type O allele for the mother, and a BLUE bead for the blood type B, and a

WHITE bead for the blood type O allele for the father. In every egg or sperm produced, only one of these

alleles will be found, depending on pure chance alone.

PROCEDURE:

For each new baby, each parent pulls out of his or her cup one allele (bead) without peeking, then

looks at it, and places it in the “Baby” cup. Each parent then records the allele color he or she contributed

for that baby, and the “Baby” records the allele combination or genotype it has inherited from its parents.

The alleles are now returned to the parents’ cups so that each parent is heterozygous again (one red and

one white allele for the mother and one blue and one white allele for the father). All recordings are made

as tally marks in the appropriate spaces of the table provided. Be sure that all the tally marks for each

person in each set of ten “matings” add up to 10 for each person (Mom, Dad, and Baby). Now record the

numbers of each phenotype of the babies. The preceding is repeated until 100 babies have been

produced. The “Baby” person should keep track of the total number of “births” – trials – for the

family/team; an example is given on the table.

PROCESSING DATA:

When all 100 babies have been produced, each person must count his or her tally marks, record

the totals, and share those totals with the family, each person recording all totals in their proper spaces.

When this is done, one parent must report totals to the teacher who will see how they add up for the class

totals.

Making Babies: Blood Types Lab