Involve Your Students and Their Families in a Fun and Easy Test for a Genetic Trait
Students will apply basic Mendelian laws and the Hardy-Weinberg Principle to test for the frequency of the tongue-rolling gene.
Then students will test themselves and relatives for the ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide (PTC). From this data, they will be able to create a pedigree for their family, and then use the Hardy-Weinberg Principle to determine the gene frequencies of a population.
The activity requires only minutes in the classroom, plus some time at home. It includes a teacher’s guide, student copymaster, and PTC paper for 50 students.