Name: ______________________________________ Date: ________________________

Student Exploration: Chicken Genetics

Vocabulary: allele, codominance, dominant, genotype, heterozygous, homozygous, phenotype,

probability, Punnett square, recessive, trial

Prior Knowledge Questions (Do these BEFORE using the Gizmo.)

1. The image shows a flower that was produced by crossing

a pure red flower with a pure white flower. Which do you
think is the dominant petal color: red or white? Explain.

Because both the red and white alleles show up in the

_____________________________________________
heterozygous flower, the red and white alleles are most likely
codominant to each other.
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_____________________________________________

2. How is the inheritance pattern shown by this flower different from other inheritance patterns

In typical complete dominance, one alleles is dominant and will always

you have seen or studied? ___________________________________________________
show up over the other. With codominance, both alleles are equally
dominant and a heterozygous individual while both traits.
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Gizmo Warm-up
There are many different ways traits can be inherited. Some traits are
governed by alleles that are dominant over other alleles. Other traits are
governed by alleles that share dominance. These alleles follow a pattern of
inheritance called codominance. With the Chicken Genetics Gizmo, you will
study how codominance affects the inheritance of certain traits.

1. Turn on Show genotype. The genotype is the allele combination an

organism has. Point to the red chicken.
F^RF^R
A. What is the red chicken’s genotype? __________________________
F^wF^w
B. What is the white chicken’s genotype? ________________________

2. What do you think the letters F, R, and W stand for in the genotypes?

_________________________________________________________________________
F is representative of chicken’s feather color , the R superscripts stands for a red father color,and
the W superscript stands for white color pattern.
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2018
 Get the Gizmo ready:
Activity A:
 Drag a red chicken and a white chicken into the
Codominant traits
parent boxes, but don’t click Breed yet.

Question: What inheritance patterns do codominant traits display?

1. Predict: What do you think the offspring of a red chicken and a white chicken will look like?
Maybe a Mix of red chicken and white chicken , have both the color feathers .
_________________________________________________________________________

F^RF^W
2. Observe: Click Breed. What are the offspring genotypes? ___________________________

An organism’s appearance is its phenotype. Describe the offspring’s phenotype.

They all have mixed red and white feathers
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3. Experiment: Drag four offspring to the Holding Cages. Click Clear, and then drag one of the
offspring to a parent box. Drag a white chicken to the other box. Click Breed several times.

Describe the resulting genotypes and phenotypes of the offspring.

_________________________________________________________________________
The offspring consists of both white feathered F^WF^W chickens and red- and white feathered
F^RF^W chickens.
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4. Revise and Repeat: Click Clear. Drag another chicken from the Holding Cages to the
parent box. Drag a red chicken to the other box. Click Breed several times.

Describe the resulting genotypes and phenotypes of the offspring.

The offspring consisted of both red feathered F^RF^R chickens and red-and-white feathered
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F^RF^W chickens.
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5. Explain: In dominant/recessive inheritance patterns, the dominant allele is always expressed

when present. The recessive allele is only expressed when the dominant allele is not
present. Use your observations from this activity to describe how codominant inheritance
patterns differ from dominant/recessive inheritance patterns.

While only one allele is dominant in dominant/recessive inheritance patterns, both alleles are
_________________________________________________________________________
equally dominant in codominance inheritance patterns. While inheritance of genotypes works in
pretty much the same way, the two types will differe in appearcence of heterozygous organism.
_________________________________________________________________________
In dominant/recessive patterns, heterozygous genotypes would have a phenotype that exhibits
the dominant trait, the phenotype in codominance patterns would appear to be equal mix of the
_________________________________________________________________________
two traits.
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2018
 Get the Gizmo ready:
Activity B:
 Click Clear.
Codominant
 Drag the remaining chickens from the Holding
crosses
Cages into the parent boxes.

Introduction: Probability is the likelihood that a specific event will occur. Scientists use
probability to predict the outcomes of different genetic crosses.

Question: How can you use probability to predict the outcome of a codominant cross?

1. Model: A Punnett square is used to model the possible FR FW

offspring genotypes from a genetic cross. The parent
genotypes are written at the top and side of the square, as FR FR FR
shown. The possible offspring genotypes are then filled in. F^RF^W

The first square is filled in for you. Fill in the remaining FW

squares. (Note: FR FW is equivalent to FW FR.) F^RF^W F^WF^W

2. Analyze: A homozygous chicken will have the same alleles for feather color. A
heterozygous chicken will have two different alleles for feather color.

A. Are the parents homozygous or heterozygous? Explain how you know.

Heterozygous, be used their genotype consist of one codominant red feather allele and one
___________________________________________________________________
codominant white feather allele.
F^RF^R,F^RF^W,F^WF^W
B. What are the possible genotypes of the offspring? __________________________

The offspring could be either homozygous or

C. Will the offspring be homozygous or heterozygous? _________________________
heterozygous.

3. Calculate: Punnett squares can be used to predict probable outcomes of genetic crosses.
To calculate probability, divide the number of one kind of possible outcome by the total
number of all possible outcomes. For example, if you toss a coin, the chance it will land on
heads is equal to 1 ÷ 2. This probability can be expressed as ½, 0.5, or 50%.

Look at the Punnett square above.

4
A. How many total possible outcomes are there? _________________

B. How many of the possible outcomes are for each of the following genotypes?
1 1 2
FR FR _______________ FW FW _____________ FR FW _____________

C. What is the probability for each of the following outcomes? (Record answers as both
fractions and percentages.)

FR FR _______________
1/4=25% FW FW _____________
1/4=25% FR FW _____________
2/4=50%

(Activity B continued on next page)

2018
 Activity B (continued from previous page)

4. Test: Use the Gizmo to test your predicted outcomes. Turn on Show statistics and Show
as approximate percentage. Click Breed. What are the results of the cross?

_________________________________________________________________________
The results were 0% red feathers, 20% white feathers, 80% red/white feathers.

_________________________________________________________________________

These results
5. Evaluate: Diddid
thenot match
results of the the
crosstheoretical values, aside
match your prediction? from
If not, why the think
do you factthat
was the case?
that the red/white chickens made up the majority of the offspring. The
reason the results were not very accurate is because only one trial
_________________________________________________________________________
was conducted. The more trials conducted, the bigger the sample
space will be and the more theoretically accurate the answers will
_________________________________________________________________________
become.
6. Collect data: Click Breed 19 more times until you have generated 100 offspring. How do the
percentages match your prediction now? Have they gotten to be more or less similar to your
original prediction?

The results are now 27% red feathers, 17% white feathers, and 56%
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red/white feathers. These results are now much closer to the
_________________________________________________________________________
predicted values, even though they are still slightly off.

7. Compare: Click Breed until you have generated at least 1,000 offspring. Compare the
statistics on the Gizmo with your original predictions. How close are they?
The final results are 26% red feathers,
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26% white feathers, and 49% red/white
feathers. These predictions are all
_________________________________________________________________________
extremely close to my predicted results,
8. each
Draw of them
conclusions: only
Each being
time about
you bred 1% off.
the parent chickens, you completed a trial. A trial is
single time that you conduct an experiment. Random chance often causes identical trials to
have different outcomes. Because of this, scientists repeat experiments many times in order
to make sure that chance alone is not responsible for the results of a trial.

How did your results change as the number of trials you completed increased? Why was it
important for you to breed the chickens repeatedly in this experiment?
As more trials were completed, the more theoretically
_________________________________________________________________________
accurate the results became. Due to the fact that
there are more outcomes, the variation of the results
_________________________________________________________________________
is less subject by chance and begins to reflect the
_________________________________________________________________________
broader patterns of allele inheritance more accurately.
This is why it is important to
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2018