Study Questions

Objective: Solve problems involving heritable conditions related to chromosomal inheritance.

Use this page to check your understanding of the content.

Study Guide Questions

1. Be able to read and interpret any karyotype, including determining the chromosomal gender of the “patient”.
2. Successfully solve heredity problems involving sex-linked characteristics.
3. Example:  Hemophilia in humans is a condition resulting in a failure to form blood clots, resulting in excessive bleeding.  It is due to a mutation in a gene found on the X-chromosome. What possible offspring can result from a baby-making union between a non-carrier female and a hemophilac male?
4. For more practice, visit: http://www.biology.arizona.edu/mendelian_genetics/problem_sets/sex_linked_inheritance/sex_linked_inheritance.html (Links to an external site.)
5. When given an example of aneuploidy, be able to hypothesize how it occurred.  (Did non-disjunction take place during meiosis I or meiosis II?  How can you tell?  Can you always tell?)
6. Be able to read and interpret pedigrees.
   1. In this pedigree, the shaded individuals are homozygous recessive. What is the genotype of individual B?
   2. What is the genotype of individual E?
   3. If E married an individual who is homozygous recessive, what is the probability that their first child will be homozygous recessive?
   4. For practice, see: http://bio3400.nicerweb.com/med/QUIZ/pedigree_q.html
   5. Why are pedigrees necessary when studying human inheritance patterns?