Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello! I have until December 4th so if you are reading this please answer quick! I need to know if there is anyway I can transform this project into trials.

Hi,

I read the procedure for the basic Tree of Life project and i was a little confused between the Abstract which described a biologist trying to determine the relationships among a group of people at a reunion and the Objective which has you comparing DNA sequences of humans and animals to determine their relatedness. It seems like two different projects to me.

I'm not sure what you had in mind to do, but you could ask friends to give you photos of their relatives without telling you their relationship and then you could try to guess which ones are siblings, cousins, aunts, parents, etc. by just comparing the photos. You could get a couple of other people to do the test as well and see who was best at telling people's relationships from their appearance. If you do get several people to do the test, be sure you get equal numbers of boys and girls because there may be a gender affect here.

The comparison of a subset of human genes to the comparable genes in animals can only be done if you know the gene sequences. You could have DNAs from several people and animals sequenced, but this could get pretty expensive. Since the genomes of many different animals have been sequenced and are available free online, using a computer and the free sequence-comparison software is the best way to do such a comparison. The interesting part comes in which genes you choose to compare. What genes make a human a human and not a chimpanzee or a mouse?

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have more questions.

Good luck!

Sybee

I'm very interested in the idea you gave me, so you're basically saying that I gather up a bunch of photos of one family, and have a few people guess about which is a person's sister, cousin, etc.? Could you give me some information for what I could search for background infomation?


Please answer back! I really like this idea.

Also maybe a connection to real life would be helpful.

Hi,

I'm glad you liked the idea. I'm really curious to know how it comes out!

If you have a big family you could use photos of them to test your hypothesis. I think it would be easier and quicker to use your own relatives than to try and find volunteers.

I'm not sure what background info you need, so here is a selection of URLs about human genetics, physical appearance and relatedness:

http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask284
http://ess.nbb.cornell.edu/relatedness.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hair_color
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... XY&cad=rja
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/ ... H6LCsmQh3k

Everyone today seems to be interested in getting their DNA sequenced so they can determine their exact biological relatedness to other humans (or even to Neanderthals!) but physical appearance still strongly affects how people perceive each other. In order to set up your test effectively you will have to choose the photos carefully so that the features of the people are distinct and not hidden by hats or bulky clothing. This may be difficult for some of the older photos. You might also want to put in some photos of totally unrelated friends as controls.

You will also have to create a form for your test volunteers to use. If you know how to code in html you could do this online and that would make it very easy to show the photos and get people's responses. If you have a friend who makes their own web pages you might ask them if they could help you do this. Either way you will still have to create the form to go with the photos and I'm not sure what is the best way to do that. Hopefully some of the other experts will read this thread and make suggestions about your project. Psychologists frequently create visual tests for subjects and if you know someone who is a psych grad student or professor you could ask them for their advice in how best to set up this test.

Good luck and do keep us posted on how you are doing.

Sybee