Awesome friends telling other awesome friends what is up in the Library, specifically, the second floor balcony facing the parking lot.

Monday, April 26, 2010

PTC tasting: Incomplete dominance or Complete dominance?

[This is quite random, and well ... might go over some people's head's, haha]

I've been wanting to do this for awhile [let people know what I've been studying/learning all semester] and since this is what I've been mostly working on for the past few weeks I want to share my findings from BIO277 on PTC tasting, haha.
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Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) is a chemical compound that, depending on the individual, one can or cannot taste. This is because of their genetic make-up. For those that can taste it, they are homozygous dominant (TT) or heterozygous (Tt). Those that cannot taste it are homozygous recessive (tt). The whole point of the lab was to figure out if PTC tasting is an example of incomplete dominance or complete dominance.

If you don't remember any of your high school biology or if you're not a biology person at all, you're probably asking yourself, "WTF RICK!? I don't care ..."

Incomplete dominance would result in three phenotypes: non-taster, weak taster, or strong taster. This means that the first allele would determine the ability to be a taster or not, and the second allele determining the strength of the taster.

Complete dominance would result in two phenotypes: non-taster and taster. This means that the first allele determines whether or not one can taste the chemical compound. This also means that there is no strength of the taster, TT & Tt both result in being able to taste the compound.

From past studies, PTC tasting does not follow the typical Mendelian pattern, which is complete dominance. In the case of PTC it actually follows the incomplete dominance.

While I and others were writing/working on our results section we all probably ran into a problem. The data from our chi-square analysis was not supporting the hypothesis of incomplete dominance. What it did support was the second hypothesis dealing with complete dominance.

That totally contradicted what other studies had shown. What went wrong?

What could have gone wrong was that the matter of "strength" of taste is totally subjective from one individual to another. There ability to taste could have been subjective. In all honesty, you either tasted it, or you didn't.
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I just educated you in genetic inheritance :)

Now go study!

7 comments:

  1. I care. this was helpful thank you

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  2. I'm glad someone cares out there...2 years later. :)

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  3. This actually helped me in my genetics class. Thanks a bunch!

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  4. I care too, you mean witch

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  5. Thanks a bunch, I was wondering if it was incomplete dominance

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