The student is placed initially in a room containing a hydroponic system growing pea plants. The laboratory room will change as different species are selected.
To use the laboratory, students must first select a species from the Species menu on the right hand side. Then select the Setup menu and choose either a Mendelian experiment or a Population experiment.
The results from both the Mendelian and Population experiments can be saved to the lab book for later analysis.
The essential features of the Genetics laboratory are described below.
Setup. The Setup menu is used to select either the Mendelian or Population experiment and then set up and control these experiments.
For a Mendelian experiment, students will be able to select from a list of available traits for the selected species, define the genotypes for the parents, select the number of offspring per cross, and then cross the parents to produce the offspring. This projector is also used to select the parents from the available offspring to produce subsequent generations.
For Population experiments, students will be able to specify or define the forces that can be applied to a population in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The parameters that can be defined for the calculation include (a) the initial allele frequency, (b) population size, (c) the number of generations to track, (d) whether genetic drift or inbreeding is turned on, (e) the mutation rate, (f) the relative fitness parameters for different genotypes, (g) the degree of assortative or disassortative mating, and (h) linkage disequilibrium.
Lab Book. The lab book is used to record procedures and observations while performing experiments in the virtual laboratory. Results from the Mendelian or Population experiments can also be saved into the lab book for more detailed analysis. See the Lab Book help menu for further details about using the lab book.
Presets. The Presets menu gives access to a set of preset genetics experiments that are already predefined and ready to run. Clicking on the preset name will clear the laboratory and launch the preset.
Live Data. The results from the Mendelian and Population experiments are displayed in the Live Data display on the right hand side of the screen. For the Mendelian experiments, a summary of phenotypic frequencies are shown below and the individual offspring resulting from the crosses are shown on top. The summary section provides the option to display the frequencies for the different phenotype combinations for the selected traits for the different generations of offspring that have been produced. The individual offspring section allows students to click on any of the offspring boxes to view the phenotype for the selected traits for that offspring and if allowed, the genotype that produced the phenotype.
For Population experiments, a graph of the allele and genotype frequencies as a function of generation can be opened from Live Data and a spreadsheet of the actual data is shown in the main Live Data area.