Students use candy to learn genetics

SPARTA — Seventh grade finished their unit on inheritance and genetics and will be beginning their studies on evolution at Hilltop Country Day School in Sparta.

Bridging the two units is the study of selective breeding which Darwin used extensively in developing his theory of evolution. Selective breeding is the process by which a breeder selects specific traits in either his crops or his animals and only permits those with the desired traits to produce offspring.

To model this and to have some holiday fun, the seventh graders selectively bred reindeer to produce a purebred red-nosed reindeer, the famous Rudolph.

Considering it to be a multiple-allele trait, the students started with a male and female of average nose color. The average nose was represented by each reindeer having five red and five green M&M’s candies.

They placed all the candy into a paper bag to represent the mating of the male and female reindeer and pulled out 10 candies one at a time from the bag. This became the nose color for the first offspring. After creating several male and female offspring, they selected the offspring with the greatest number of red candies (male and female) to breed together. They kept repeating this process taking about six to 10 generations of breeding to finally produce male and female reindeer with pure red noses – Rudolph’s line of reindeer.