The four activities before were created for the introductory biology course at the University of Illinois. The original versions of the first three activities, created by request of the instructor, were completed in 2013 as part of a summer graduate assistantship. The most recent incarnations, linked below, were created in July 2023 as part of a modernization effort to ensure they would continue to be compatible with modern browsers as long as possible.
While the original versions used the CreateJS package to interact with the canvas element, the new versions are more straightforward, using DOM elements to achieve the same purpose in a more accessible and compatible way.
The fourth activity, featuring Anopheles gambiae, was created in 2015. While the code is not up to my current standard, it is still written in a way that allows it to be compatible and accessible, so it has not been updated.
The images of Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles gambiae were created by me, using public domain source images. The concept was cooperatively designed by Benjamin Clegg and myself, and the code was entirely written by myself, outside of the use of the Normalize.CSS library to ensure a consistent appearance across browsers and operating systems.
- Exploring Genotypic and Phenotypic Ratios in a
Monohybrid Cross (monohybrid folder)
Go through several crosses of fruit flies, looking at alleles of the ebony gene. - Exploring Genotypic and Phenotypic Ratios in a Dihybrid
Cross (dihybrid folder)
Simulate crosses of flies with variations in the ebony and apterous genes, culminating in a full dihybrid cross. - Linkage Maps in Drosophila
melanogaster (linkagemaps folder)
This activity was designed for in-class use. Students are assigned a pair of genes, and then select those two genes and simulate crosses of flies with those genes. Through this activity, students test the null hypothesis that the genes independently assort, and will ultimately reject that null hypothesis, as all four genes involved are linked. This naturally leads into a discussion about linkage disequilibrium and crossing-over events during meiosis. Note: during the class activity, passwords prevent students from continuing, in order to keep everyone at the same place; these password checks have been disabled here, so simply click "Continue" to move forward. - Testing Linkage in Anopheles
gambiae (anopheles folder)
While the other activities are mostly self-contained, this activity focuses on the generation of data which is then used for a classwide activity when aggregated. Students should be able to combine their data to make a full linkage map for the four genes featured in the activity.