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How can one deduce information about genes, alleles, and gene functions from analysis of genetic crosses and patterns of inheritance?

Topic

Transmission - Patterns of Inheritance

Framing Question

How can one deduce information about genes, alleles, and gene functions from analysis of genetic crosses and patterns of inheritance?

Learning Objectives

Draw a pedigree based on information in a story problem.
Using pedigrees, distinguish between dominant, recessive, autosomal, X-linked, and cytoplasmic modes of inheritance.
Predict the transmission of phenotypes associated with maternal effect genes.
Explain why the terms “dominant” and “recessive” are context dependent and may differ at the cellular level or at the level of a pedigree.
Calculate the probability that an individual in a pedigree has a particular genotype (using Bayesian inference if appropriate for course).
Design genetic crosses to provide information about genes, alleles, and gene functions.
Interpret the results of experiments comparing the phenotypes that result from single mutations in two different genes with the phenotype of the double mutant, contrasting epistatic and additive interactions.
Explain how continuous traits are the result of many different gene combinations that can each contribute a varying amount to a phenotype.
Evaluate how genes and the environment can interact to produce a phenotype.

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