Human Genetics

A Worldwide Search for the Dominant Trait

Do You Have It?

Fall 2001
Final Reports

All classes participating in this project have been asked to submit a final report to the project Discussion Area. In this report, students share what they have learned from doing the project. Read on to see the results of the students' hard work!

Banner County High School

1. Our class was able to finish the project because we had some smart people in our class who worked together to complete the project.

2. The most important idea we learned from this project was that the national dominant trait was usually our dominant trait also.

3. This project was fairly accurate with the sources that we could come up with.

4. Use Junior and Senior High Students instead of elementary students who may not even know what the numbers and colors are.

5. Have more categories to work with and be more specific.

6. No because we couldn't tell if the students were telling the truth on the color blind test or if they were being uncooperative.

7. We used a spreadsheet to calculate the totals of each category. Then we used a calculator to calculate the averages.

8. free ear lobes 7% off
white forelock 9% off
dimples 12% off
thumbs 1% off
pinkies 14% off
mid-digit hair 4% off
color blind 20% off

9. Yes. Usually the dominant trait occurred more often than the recessive trait.

Isaac School District No. 5

1- Yes, our class was able to complete the project as it was designed. In order to find out how many people had recessive or dominant traits for each one of the six categories given of the genetics traits; every student has collected data from at least five people.

2- The most important scientific procedure we have learned is that our parents genes determine our physical characteristics.

3- If someone asks us about the outcome of this project, our answer would be very positive. We have learned through the project, that if our parents have a dominant or a recessive trait, it plays a strong role on our physical traits.

4- If we could do this project all over again; in order to find more valuable information, we would like to do an extensive research.

5- If we could speak to the project leader, we would suggest him to provide with more hands on activities.

6- In general, our results were somewhat different of what we had expected them to be. At the beginning of this project, we did not understand the impact that the genetic traits have in our features, and now we do.

7- To analyze the data, we compared the recessive and the dominant traits. We found out the percentages between both, recessive and dominant traits.

8- Ear lobes 60% dominant
40% recessive

White forelock 30% dominant
70% recessive

dimples 60% dominant
40% recessive

thumb 57% dominant
43% recessive

Pinky 37% dominant
63% recessive

Mid-digit-hair 38% dominant
62% recessive

9- The research proves that usually, the dominant trait occurred more often than the recessive trait.

Naples High School

1) We are still working on the project in-groups. Each group will present a report on their findings
 to the their respective class prior to the end of the term.
2) For most of the students, this was the first time to conduct a survey and analyze data.
3) It was interesting and informative. Also working in heterogeneous groups was fun.
4) We would learn more about the different traits and inheritance prior to conducting the surveys, 
especially color blindness.
5) None-the project leader did an excellent job.
6) We were surprised to learn that the dominant trait is not necessarily the one that occurs most often. 
7) We found the sums of the various columns of the spreadsheet by highlighting them and reading 
the totals at the bottom of the sheet. We then figured the percentages. We did not'not do much with the 
color blindness data.
8) The most frequent was "free ear lobes" (65.4%) and the least frequent was the "white forelock." 
The range of the two was 47.5%.
9) There did not seem to be a relationship as you can see by the large range of the dominant traits' occurrences.
10) The most common form of color blindness is red/green color blindness. It affects 7 percent
of the male population, but only 0.4 percent of women.

Millburn Middle School

Greetings again from Millburn Middle School in Millburn, New Jersey. We are two classes of eighth graders and have finished out project. Here are our concluding remarks.

We enjoyed participating in this project. We felt the activities were easy to follow and complete. The pictures of the traits really helped. Although we learned many things from the project, one of the most interesting was the fact that a dominant gene can be very rare. This is probably what we would tell someone about the outcome of the project, and because of this the results did not meet our expectations. This was especially true of the white forelock, which no one in the class had. We found it also very interesting that our results were quite different from the larger study results. It seems that no one in our classes have a white forelock, but out of over 8,000 students, almost 1,500 did. The large sample size really makes a difference.

We felt that in some cases, such as the thumbs, it can be difficult to tell what the answer should be. It seems that there can be different degrees of a particular trait, and sometimes results may be misleading.

We liked learning about Punnett Squares as a way of predicting how offspring might look. Some of the web sites we went to had some interesting Punnett Square activities.

We used the Excel Spreadsheet to total the numbers and get graphs and percentages. This gave us a clear picture of the outcomes.
We also learned more about color blindness. There are many types of color blindness, and all the tests were fun to do. It is interesting to note that depending on the number of colors your computer is set for, these tests can look very different. So computers may not be the best way to take these tests.

If we could change anything, we would try to tell classes that they should have the same number of participants for each individual trait. That would make the data a little easier to manipulate. One of the things we liked was the number of participants and the fact that they come from so many places.

Thanks,

Millburn Middle School
Mrs. Bagish's Digital Memories Classes

East Iredell Middle School

East Iredell Middle School is located in Statesville, North Carolina, which is 40 miles north of Charlotte, the largest city in our state. Approximately 100 7th grade students in four science classes participated in gathering the genetic data that was submitted for our school.
Data was collected about the students during class and then over a 3-day period the students collected data on all persons living in their households; and some students surveyed friends and family outside their homes. Approximately 600 individuals were surveyed once all summaries were compiled.
Students created bar graphs illustrating the data collected for their particular class. Data from the separate classes was compared via the graphs and similar results were recognized.
Several interesting conclusions were drawn from the numeric data we collected:
1) The participants were almost 50/50 of having white forelock verses no white forelock and in having curved verses straight pinkies.
2) Two-thirds of the participants did not have mid-digit hair even though this is the recessive trait.
3) However, these numbers were compatible with the totals calculated from the other schools in this survey, in that the recessive traits showed larger numbers in the following listed traits - white forelock, thumbs, and mid-digit hair.
4) The one category that our school differed from the totals of all other school was in the number of dimples. Our participants had a majority with dimples while the majority total for the other schools combined was largely without dimples.
We found it interesting that geographical regions could possibly characterize genetic traits; however, another school approximately 50 miles from us did not get the same dimple results. Obviously a vast amount of numeric data and numerous trials are in order for verifying any trends. We look forward to comparing these results to spring data with a new group of students to see if we get similar results.

Boone Central School

The sixth grade class at Boone Central School in Petersburg, Nebraska enjoyed working on this genetics project. We have learned a great deal about genetics and are curious to learn more.

After analyzing data from all the schools, we have made the following observations. In most instances, the traits that are dominate tend to occur more often. The trait that really surprised us, however, was white forelocks. We expected more white forelocks since that is the dominate trait. What we observed, however, was just the opposite. There are a for greater number of people without white forelocks.

We found that even though our class is very small, only 11 students, our results tended to be similar to results of the larger groups. When it came to our thumbs, however, we have more curved than straight thumbs. Most schools are opposite this. For color blindness, we have one color blind student. That student is a girl, even though statistically you would expect that student to be a boy. The girls father, however is color blind, as would be expected.

If we participate in this project in the future, we would like to include more students, possibly the entire school. That would be fun.

Jane Addams H. S.

1. Our 9th grade science class at Jane Addams completed the project although we had on-line problems and some of the communication came from a home computer. We also need a lot more information about genetics.
2. We learned about dominant and recessive traits. Not all dominant traits will show up in a population if the trait is not there.
3. We would answer that although white forelock genes, straight pinky genes, and mid-digit hair genes are dominant, their frequency was not shown probably because the dominant genes were not present. Therefore, the recessive traits showed up. Dimples, straight thumbs and lack of color blindness were dominant and showed up in better frequency ranges.
4. If we did this project again, we would collect data on more students. This was our first collaborative project, and we wanted to see how it would go.
5. We had some trouble deciding if our pinky was really straight or if our thumbs were truly straight. The pictures helped, but in some cases, we questioned our data. Possibly, other very specific traits could be viewed.
6. In some cases, we saw dominant traits taking over. We expected that there would be more dominance with dominant genes. That was not the case because the dominant gene was not present and the recessive genes showed up.
7. To analyze this data, we used a calculator.
8. The frequency ranges for our data only:
earlobes: 4%

Forelocks 76%
Dimples 28%
Thumbs 68%
Pinky 76%
Mid-digit hair 76%
R-G color blindness 100%
9. There is a definite relationship between dominance and how often a trait occurred. If the dominant trait was not present in a population, it could not be transferred and the recessive showed higher numbers than expected.
10. Most often red-green color blindness is in male. We learned it was sex-linked.

Thank you for the opportunity to collaborate on this project. We are going to try others.

Woodleigh School- Minimbah, Queensland, AU

1. We were able to complete the project without any problems or hassles

2. We learnt about human genetics and where they come from and what they do. We also learnt how to put information onto Excel. We also learnt about dominant traits and recessive traits, and that dominant is the strong gene and recessive is the weak gene.

3. We were surprised of the outcome, because the totals of some recessive genes were more common than the dominant genes.

4. Observe more people around the community.
Communicate more within the group.

5: I would suggest that they should have less types of colour-blindness and you should make the test harder. You could do this by making the questions more challenging.

When you start learning about the genes, some people find it a bit to easy and I think that you could come up with something a little more brain teasing.

6. We did no’t know what to expect. Although when the results came out it was interesting to see the differences between a certain number of people.

I expected that nobody would have colour-blindness but to my surprise a fair amount did!

7. After analyzing the data from all schools we calculated percentages recorded for each trait and drew comparisons between data from different schools.

8. We did not have time to complete this task.

9. When we read the information we observed that the dominant trait was evident in most cases.

10. We learnt that red green colour blindness is a very recessive trait, it usually skips a generation and is most common in men.

St. Mary's School in Rutherford, NJ.

We are the St. Mary's Engineering Club from St. Mary's School in Rutherford, NJ. Our club is mostly 6th graders, but we do have two 7th graders. There were 12 of us who took part in this project.

1. We were able to complete the project as it was designed.

2. We learned that there are a lot of ways to look at recessive and dominant genetics.

3. We thought that the outcome wouldn't be that scientific but when we saw all the other schools we saw that there were a lot of things that were the same as ours.

4. We wouldn't do the forelock survey because we only did our class and didn't get enough old people to find this information.

5. We would ask to have more regular questions and less color blindness.

6. Like No. 3 above, we thought that our survey wasn't accurate because we were only doing our group, so our expectations weren't very good for the survey, but we found out that our survey is like a lot of other schools, only smaller.

7. We used math to analyze the data.

8. We didn't do this part.

9. We didn't find a relationship between how often a these types of traits occurred and a specific dominance in our class because we didn't have that many kids doing the project. We had tall & short people, people of the same and different nationalities, and our data was different between each of them. Maybe if we had more people or knew more about the other people in the survey we would have more information.

10. We didn't do this part.

Central Middle School

Hello! All 4 of my 6th grade classes are combining our findings into one final report. This was the very first time many of the students used the Internet in a research format. It was very exciting to know that our data was being used and seen by other students across the world.

This project was very worth the time spent on it in class. Students were using "real" data and took their roles as scientists very seriously. The connection between math and science was highlighted as students used the data chart (which was printed out and all taped together) to find the totals for each category. If a discrepancy arose, students had to add their numbers again. (oh, the joys of real science!!)

Many students were surprised to find out that the dominant trait is not always "dominant"! While our class data showed that most people did not have white forelock, we thought that overall we would see that most people do. The same was true for the dimples. It was interesting that sometimes a recessive trait shows up more. Students were interested in knowing why.
Students also noticed that people around the world (outside the USA) seemed to have the same results in "dominant" and "recessive" traits as we did. One student did notice that not many people outside the USA had color blindness.

This was a very good project to go over how science is done in the real world- How important it is for scientists to collects lots of data. We were able to discuss variables that might have affected the results.

Thank you!!
Ms. Lynette Wehner
Central Middle School
Plymouth, MI

Ukiah High School

Final Report For Ukiah High School

1) Yes, we were because we had a great teacher teaching us and we worked together to make sure we understood what to do.
2) The most important thing we learned was the basics of genetics and how to conduct research.
3) We got what we expected.
4) Some of us would round numbers differently, so we would get different results.
5) We might ask them to come up with a different type of table for the data.
6) Yes, we followed the instructions easily and correctly.
7) First we looked at percentages, and then we did the Hardy-Weinberg activity and then the Chi-Squared activity.
8) 47.4 %
9) There wasn’t really a relationship because we saw more people with recessive traits than dominate traits.
10) That all of our information had been what we would expect to get, with only 2 acceptations.

Blessed Sacrament School

The outcome of this project was a very positive one. We learned valuable information and was able to collect information form different people to determine if their traits were more dominant than recessive.

The only thing that we would do differently would be to make sure that their was an adequate amount of computers available to us so that we could view results together as a class.

If we could speak to the project leader, we would ask him for other activities that dealt with genetics to be incorporated into this project such as dealing with Punnett Squares or Selective Breeding.

Our hypothesis was that the dominant trait for each category would occur more often than the recessive trait. In our findings, we did have more dominant traits than recessive. We were amazed at our recessive results though.

One of our groups was put in charge of going through the information of the other schools. They compared the information from the other schools with what we had gathered and then summarized their findings. They later shared the information with the rest of the class.

The frequency range of the dominant traits in our findings was 64%.

The relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance was that if the dominant trait was present it would cover up the recessive trait.

Red-green color blindness is a recessive trait that is found on the X chromosome. Males are more likely to have re-green color blindness than females because the male only has to inherit one gene and the female has to inherit two. Therefore, red-green color blindness is a sex-linked trait.

Hammock Woods Academy

Our class was able to complete the project without any difficulties. One the most interesting things we learned is that dominant genetic traits are not always the most common. In our results, we discovered that dominant traits were the most common only about half the time. We also learned a lot about data sampling and probability. We figured out the percentages for dominant and recessive traits in our small survey sample, and then compared it with the larger group project surveys. That really helped show us that you get different, and (hopefully) more precise statistics from larger scientific studies than from small ones.

The only thing we would have done differently would have been to interview more people, mostly just for fun! There was plenty of data in the group project results. Our results did not match our expectations when we started this project. We fully expected dominant traits to be the most common and were surprised to find that's not the case all the time. We found the frequency range of the dominant traits to be about 17% to 65%.

We enjoyed doing this project. We learned a lot about Mendelian Genetics, used Punnet Squares to predict phenotypes and genotypes and had a good time during the process.

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to participate in this project.

Fruitland Middle School, Fruitland, ID, USA

Greetings from Fruitland Middle School!

We were able to complete the project as designed. All students completed surveys on themselves. Survey of family members was voluntary. We added several items to our class survey: eye color, hair color, crossed arms and clasped hands. We also ordered some "taste papers" to determine whether people could taste Sodium Benzoate, PTC or thiourea. We also included control papers with no chemical additives. Some people said they could taste the control papers, but we concluded they said that because they thought they were supposed to taste something. In families where neither parent could taste the chemicals, none of the biological children could taste the chemicals. If one or both parents could taste the chemicals, then all related children could taste the chemicals. We were also able to test 3 sets of grandparents and found that the parents of the nontasting parent were also nontasting. The 2 tasting parents had at least one tasting parent. We also
found that some people could taste one chemical, but not all three.

The only improvement we would suggest is to try to find
more traits or some different traits to include in the survey. We had difficulty determining pinkies and thumbs.

Before we looked at the data, we suspected that dominant
traits weren't always more common. We hadn't seen anyone in our community with a white forelock., for example. We analyzed our data by counting totals on an Excel spreadsheet.
Frequency
earlobes: 14
forelock: 70
dimples: 38
thumb: 2
pinky: 0
mid-digit: 60
color-blind: 94

We thought more people would be color blind, though we
only found one color blind male in our survey. This helped us
understand more about sex-linked characteristics. We will be
studying hemophelia to further our understanding.

Thanks for the opportunity to participate. Mrs Hill's classes.

J. F. Doughty School, Bangor, ME

The outcome of the project was a success because we did all the steps and learned a lot. We had a lot of surveyed people, which made the project easier. First, we calculated totals and percentages of the dominant and recessive traits, then we put the data on a spreadsheet, and then we used the computer make a bar graph.

The results of the project didn’t match our expectations because a lot of people didn’t have the dominant phenotype, such as dimples. We expected far more people to have dimples (as high as 75%) but only 43% had them. Only one dominant percentage was close to what we expected, the free earlobes. The earlobes had 65% dominant and we expected 75% dominant. So we learned that the dominant trait can be, but isn’t always the most common. Maybe this is because the recessive trait was the only trait at first and one generation it changed because of a genetic mutation. Then there was a dominant trait and the percentage increased over time because it was dominant. If our theory is correct, we would expect the dominant percentage to increase to about 75% in the future.

During the project we learned how genetic traits can change through generations. Also, we learned what dominant and recessive traits were and how phenotypes were determined. We like the project and would change only one thing; we would survey a lot more people ourselves: we only surveyed 50.

Curtis Elementary Gifted Education Program

The fourth and fifth grade gifted education students surveyed 149 fourth and fifth grade regular education students and 276 adults. A simple adding machine was used to calculate the percentages of individuals showing the seven traits. Of the seven traits surveyed in a total population of 9047, free ear lobes--65%, straight thumb--52%, and bent pinky--52% occurred most often. White forelock--16%, dimples--42%, mid-digit hair--34%--and red-green color blindness-3%--occurred less often.
Question for further study:
Does mid-digit hair occur more often in adult males?
The gifted students studied cells and DNA. Identifying dominant and recessive traits in a population enabled the students to gather data for science fair projects on human genetic traits. Other genetic traits are included--rolling the tongue, eye color, and hair color. Additional science fair projects in January involve geneology and color blindness.
The students presented their findings on our school's closed-circuit television program, and created Powerpoint graphs.

Hillbrook School

The 4th, 5th and 6th graders took a great deal of interest in this project. Some of our students used the internet to interview family members who lived far away. The area that caused the most discussion was the white forelock. We found no one who had this trait. I however, found one of the trainers at the gym where I work out had a white forelock and a cleft chin! So did his father, which I found out after I "pounced"on him! We had one child who had one attached ear lobe, and one hanging! The other students teased him that he had been pulled by that ear as a child!
All of the students took this project seriously and enjoyed it.
Thank You. Happy Holidays and stay safe everyone!

NW Cabarrus High School

1. Was your class able to complete the project as it was designed? Explain why or why not. They were able to complete the data submission and we had a brief discussion of their findings, but we are not yet studying the genetic inheritance unit and have not had time to fully discuss the overall findings of the project.

2. What was the most important new idea or scientific procedure you learned by doing this project? The idea of global data submission and analysis is an exciting one.

3. If someone asked you about the outcome of the project, how would you answer? I think it has been beneficial for students and teachers from all over the country.

4. If you had the chance to do this project again, what would you do differently? I would try to rearrange the semester so that the project falls at the same time as the class work.

5. If you could speak to the project leader, what suggestions for improvement would you offer? I do not think this project needs any improvement - it's great as is.

6. Did the results of your project match your expectations? Explain why or why not. The students thought that the dominant genes would show up most often, but they did not.

7. What procedures did you use to analyze the large quantity of data? We have not yet done the analysis of the overall data, but we plan to use the Hardy-Weinberg equation and the Chi-square analysis.

8. What was the frequency range (highest% minus lowest%) of the dominant traits ? We have not done the calculations yet, but the students noticed the large discrepancies of dominant expression in the various traits and we had a great discussion about the possible reasons for this.

9. Is there a relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance? Explain. There did not seem to be a relationship between dominance and expressional frequency. Just because a trait is dominant, it does not mean it has to be the most frequently expressed. One student even mentioned hearing about a birth defect associated with the white forelock, and asked if that association might be the reason for the low frequency of the white forelock trait. I had also heard of this, so we did a search in Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (http://www3.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Omim/) and found several entries in OMIM of genetic abnormalities associated with the white forelock.

10. What did you learn about the way red-green color blindness is inherited in humans? Sex-linked recessive. The students remembered this from 10th grade biology. We did not have any red-green color blindness show up in our survey. We will definitely use the overall project data to study it's inheritance when we get to that topic in class.

Makati Science High School, Makati, Philippines

1. yes,because our batch mates made it easier for us to collect the data, and with the help of our teacher, it came out really fun.

2.The most important idea was for us to collect data by survey. We have learned how to get a frequency

3. We would say that the outcome of the project was great!

4. If we had the chance to do the project again we probably would change the white forelock to widows peak, because we found out that not many people have white forelocks, but then people having white forelocks is new to us.

5.If we could speak to the project leader, we wont suggest anything because we think the project is already A okay.

6. No, it didn't match our expectation because we thought all that the result of the dominant trait over the recessive is more domineering.

7. Each member of our group was assigned a section in our school, and then we combined all of our results.

8. the frequency range of the dominant traits is 94%

Lyman A. Budlong MS

Final Report on the Human Genetics Project

The students of Budlong School, Located in Chicago Illinois, learned a great deal of things from our participation in the Genetics Project. This project gave our student a real hands on experience for gaining a better understanding of dominant and recessive genes. Most students assumed that if a trait was dominant, that they would see a higher number of that characteristic in their population. They concluded this after observing and counting the first “thumb” characteristic.

This theory was then proven incorrect, especially with the observation and documentation of the “white forelock” characteristic. Our class was able to complete the section in which we were able to observe physical characteristics. We did however have a problem with completing the color blindness activity. This required either Internet connectivity at home, or hundreds of color copies to be produced for the student to take home. For these reasons, we were only successful in completing the survey results.

The procedures we used to analyze the data included, a tally count in each individual classroom. Each student then used Microsoft Excel to create a bar graph to visually display their findings. From this activity, the teacher then created a classroom chart to compile the findings from all participating classrooms. A final chart was then produced to share the compiled finding with our school. Our outside bulletin board shared our findings with the entire school.

We enjoyed our participation in this project. It provided our students with a variety of activities that enabled them to learn valuable scientific concepts, while simultaneously applying computer skills. If I were to participate again, I would be sure to have better pictures and visuals to demonstrate the physical characteristics.

Ruffing Montessori School

There were 9407 people involved in the Ear Lobe test, 8122 in the White
Forelock test, 8819 people in the Dimple test, 8811 people in the Thumb
test, 8622 in the pinky test, 7854 people in the Mid-digit hair test, and
5285 people were involved in the color blindness test.
Ear lobe: 5912 dominant-65%; 3135 recessive-34%
White Forelocks: 1452 dominant-18%; 6670 recessive-82%
Dimples: 3768 dominant-43%; 5054 recessive-57%
Thumb: 4436 dominant-50% 4375 recessive-50%
Pinky: 4845 dominant-56%; 4375 recessive-44%
Mid-digit hair: 3105 dominant-40%; 4749 recessive-60%
Red green color blindness 5016 dominant-95%; 269 recessive-5%

The ratio of free earlobes to attached earlobes is 9:5.
The ratio of white forelocks to people without white forelocks is 1:5.
The ratio of people with dimples to those who don't is 7:10.
The ratio of people with curved thumbs with people with straits thumbs is
24:25.
The ratio of people with bent pinkies to people with strait pinkies is
23:20.
The ratio of people with mid-digit to the people without mid-digit hair is
13:25.

In response to questions 17, 18, and 19, 52% of people show red green
colorblindness, 75% of the colorblind were male because of the colorblind
trait being carrying on the X chromosome, and 25% of the colorblind were
female.

In about half of the questioned traits there was a greater number of people
with recessive traits. Someone that shows a dominant trait could carry the
gene for the recessive trait. Someone that shows the recessive trait would
not be able to be a carrier of the dominant trait because if the dominant
trait were present the recessive trait would not be seen. Most of ratios
were very close. That can tell us that many people have the recessive
traits.

International School of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Our genetics survey was an interesting project but it took us a long time to
complete it. We always had to make sure that we had surveyed every class and
making appointments with teachers to meet their students was sometimes
difficult, especially with the French speaking classes.

We learned about different traits, many of which we had never even heard of
before. We had to learn about interpreting graphs and how to use percentages,
mode, median, mean and range. We learned to use Excel on the computer to
illustrate our draft which was fun.

The trait we enjoyed the least surveying was the colour blindness with younger
grades. Many of them could not read the numbers properly not so much because
they were colour bind but primarily because they had not learned them yet. It
was confusing to figure which was which.

In the case of most classes not all though, the dominant traits came up more
often than recessive ones. However, in the case of white forelock, although it
is a dominant trait it was not found. We had expected to see more kids with
recessive traits than we did in our survey.
The frequency range was often around 75%.

typed by the teacher but dictated by the students.

Dakota Ridge High School

As biology students at Dakota Ridge, we have tried to learn as much from this data as possible. There are a few specific items that have been the most interesting to us.
To start, the most important idea we learned is that it is easier to have a dominant trait regardless of whether it is a good or bad trait. This is due to the fact that there are two possible genotypes for the dominant trait and only one for the recessive. What surprised us, was that that didn't mean the dominant trait was more common. For example, with forelocks, dimples and mid-digital hair, the recessive trait was seen more often in the population.
We were also surprised to find the large difference in the occurence of the color blind data. We predicted the numbers would be more like the other traits. This indicated that it didn't follow Mendel's Law of Dominance. In other words, there seemed to be a different pattern to the inheritance.
We also learned about frequency rates. We determined the frequency rate to be 43% (not counting color blind data). This told us that dominant traits vary widely in whether they are more common or very rare.
This lab also helped us to learn about huge amounts of data through the use of tables and bar graphs. They both helped us to compare differences between dominant and recessive traits.
To leave on a high note, we have learned much about genetics through this project. Many of the human traits we observed and the statistics and conclusions were interesting. Thanks for the experience.

Coach Donnel's Biology Students

Great Oak Middle School

Greetings from Great Oak Middle School:
Our class surveyed 55 7th and 8th graders. We found all students eager to participate in the research because they were excited to be a part of a world wide project, the data collection was interesting and fun. Collecting the research introduced many of us to real scientific procedures and methods.Additionally, through further study we began to comprehend how complex genetic science is.

We found the results of the data somewhat surprising. We expected dominant traits in each category to be seen in over 50% of the population. However, in three categories: thumb, mid-digit hair and white forelock, a greater percentage of students carried the recessive trait. Therefore, it appears there is not a significant relationship between how often a trait occurred and dominance. At first we felt that we did not have a large enough population for our results to be accurate, but other groups showed similar findings. We speculated that student diversity may account for these results. Although all students in our survey were caucasian, they represent many different nationalities. Perhaps a group from one geographic location would share more common traits, or the dominant trait would be more prevalent.

If we were to do this project again we would survey a greater number of students and prepare an informational presentation. A suggestion for improving the project would be to include additional hands-on activities,experiments and student-friendly resources that coincide with this topic. We enjoyed participating in this project, and we gained insight into a scientific study that is changing daily and will certainly impact our future.

Thank you.

Bledsoe Co. Middle School

Our 7/8 grade science class really enjoyed taking part in this project.

The class was able to complete the project as it was designed because before we started, we completed
 an entire lesson on Genetics. The lesson helped us understand what we were looking for when we began 
our surveying.

The most important scientific procedure that we learned was being able to use the scientific method 
with this project. The most important new idea that we came across was that a gene carries the 
information of a specific trait to its host and how sex-linked traits are found only on the X chromosome.

We are the ACE class at Bledsoe County Middle School. We are located in Pikeville, TN. We were able to 
complete this project according to all the directions that were given. One of the most useful things
 we learned were the uses for converting the data to percentages so that we could compare the data 
from other schools. In most cases we found that the dominant trait was dominant to some degree in
 our population and the other school surveys that we compared ourselves to. We concluded that the 
white forelock may not be showing up in the surveyed population because they may be too young to 
be showing evidence of the trait. We enjoyed participating in the project.

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