A nutshell, dummies, or lay person's version please......?

Question

I would like to get a version to explain Mendel's three laws of inheritance to a smaller child. I have just scientific wording which might be tough for my neice to understand at this point. Could anyone nutshell the laws of segregation, independent assortment, and dominance? Thanks.

Answer 1

1. Mendel's law of segregation says that when gametes are made (eggs and sperms or reproductive cells), the two factors that control a trait separate from each other and go into different gametes.

Picture this: you have a couple of laundry baskets. You get pairs of shoes out of the closet, and you separate the pairs of shoes, putting one shoe from each pair into each basket. When you are finished, each basket has just one of every kind of shoe and no pairs. Segregate means separate.

2. The law of independent assortment says that the way one pair of factors separates into the gametes doesn't affect the way another pair of factors separates.

To picture this: in the previous example with the shoes, the way you separate one pair of shoes (maybe you put the left shoe in the first basket and the right shoe in the second basket) does not affect the way you separate another pair of shoes. So you don't have to put the left shoe in the first basket and the right into the second basket again. You could put them the other way around. It's just random. Toss one shoe of each pair into each basket and don't pay any attention to left and right shoes.

3. The rule of dominance says that when both forms of a gene are in an individual, the dominant one shows up and the recessive one does not show.

This is kind of like when parents and kids don't agree about what TV show to watch. The parents are going to get to choose and the kids aren't going to get to say. However, if the parents are there, then the kids do get to say what they will watch. The dominant parents get to say while the recessive child doesn't get to say when both the parent and the child are there. (At least that's how it was in the 50s!)

Answer 2

it's been ages since yr 8 bio but i can still remember dominance.
draw a little grid with D and d across top D and d down the other side
D d
D
d
DD will be dominant, dd recessive, if mum has blue eyes =dd dad has blue eyes =dd, then across the grid only dd options are possible

Answer 3

You can't really dumb it down. I could explain it but it would take a lot of explaining. Look at wikipedia and then try to put it in your own words, but it is a complex subject.

Answer 4

Use a metaphor about different colored Lego blocks.