Welcome to the Chromosome Project!  Today you have the opportunity to select a chromosome for further research.  The goal of this project is to help you make a clear connection between DNA, genes, chromosomes, traits, and inheritance.

Your goals for Days 1 and 2 are as follows:

1. Select one of the human chromosomes to research (autosomal chromosomes = 1-22 and the sex chromosomes are X and Y).
2. Research and write down what happens during human development if more than two copies of the chromosome are present.  What happens if only one copy of the chromosome is present?  Be sure to document your sources!  One resource is the Wikipedia entry on aneuploidy.
3. Conduct a search for “genes on chromosome____” and insert your selected chromosome.
4. Research at least 5 genes on your chromosome.  Research = write it down!  You must document your work to receive credit.  For each gene, write down the key information about each gene.  How?  Read below:

To research your gene, visit the NCBI Human Genome Resources page and enter your gene name into the “Search For Human Genes” box.  When the search completes, click on your gene name (typically the first gene on the list) and browse through the entry.  There is a ton of information provided!  For each gene, write down the following:

• Official Symbol
• Official Name
• Your own one-sentence summary of about the protein the gene codes for
• Location of the gene on the chromosome
• Number of exons in the gene
• Length of the gene (in DNA bases) – hover your mouse over the top green line under the “genomic regions, transcripts, and products” and looking for the number after the word “length”)  
• Length of the protein (in amino acids) the gene codes for – the length of the amino acid sequence can be found by clicking on the word “protein” on the right hand side of the page under Related Information.  Browse the entries for the full-length protein and note the number of amino acids in the protein.  The full-length protein can be challenging to find: look for an entry that does not include words like truncated, isoform, predicted, synthetic construct, or unnamed protein product.

Day 3: Select one of the genes from your list.  Research one trait associated with that gene and explain the connection between the gene and the trait.  For your final work, create a poster with the following information:

• Chromosome
• Brief description of what happens with too many or too few copies of the chromosome
• For the gene you researched the most (and have trait information for):
  • Official Symbol
  • Official Name
  • Your own one-sentence summary of about the protein the gene codes for
  • Location of the gene on the chromosome
  • Number of exons in the gene
  • Length of the gene (in DNA bases)
  • Length of the protein (in amino acids)
  • Description of trait and how that is connected with your gene

Next, we transitioned in to the lesson about Down Syndrome.  We discussed the first three slides of the Down Syndrome Case Study slide deck and then detoured to the Wikipedia entry on aneuploidy.  We focused on the Types section of the entry, examining how, of the autosomal chromosomes, only Trisomy 21 will result in a viable fetus most of the time.  Students learned that when trisomy occurs in most of the other autosomal chromosomes, the result is an embryo that is non-viable, often resulting in miscarriage.

Back to the Case Study!  To learn how Trisomy 21 occurs, students watched a short video illustrating non-disjunction.  To put a human face on Trisomy 21, or Down Syndrome, students watched another short video about two young twins with Down Sydrome.  Both videos are shown below:

The second video naturally leads to questions about twins, so slide 5 explains the difference between identical and fraternal (non-identical) twins.  After slide 5, students received an article to read and annotate with questions about the connection between Down Syndrome and Alzheimer’s Disease.