Frenetic Genetics

Resource for Grades 9-12

Frenetic Genetics

Media Type:
Video

Running Time: 1m 24s
Size: 30.6 MB

or


Source: Faces of America: "Frenetic Genetics"

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Resource Produced by:

WNET

Collection Developed by:

WNET

Collection Credits

Collection Funded by:

Coca-Cola

Faces of America on VITAL is made possible by The Cola Company.

Funding for Faces of America on PBS was provided by The Coca-Cola Company and Johnson & Johnson. Additional funding was provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Atlantic Philanthropies, and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS.


In this segment from Faces of America, historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. meets with leading genetic researchers to learn more about what his genome reveals about his health, physical features and life experiences. Through painstaking research, Gates learns that by studying his genome, the researchers accurately predict that he is lactose intolerant, that he will not loose his hair prematurely and that there is no genetic sign of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Supplemental Media Available:

Frenetics Genetics Transcript (Document)

open Discussion Questions

  • What did Henry Louis Gates, Jr. learn about his genotype?
  • How were these genetic variants represented in Gates’s phenotype?
  • Ask students to speculate why there are different alleles for these genes. Why are there differences or variations in these traits?

open Transcript

Nathaniel Pearson: We did find in your genome you have an interesting variant that’s associated with glucose galactose absorption.

Gates: I am severely lactose intolerant.

Hugh Young Reinhoff, Jr., MD: You had variants in genes that are know to be, to play a role in epiphyseal development.

Gates: My slipped epiphysis.

Pearson: Exactly.

Gates: My broken hip when I was fourteen.

Pearson: Just looking at your list of variants we would have predicted that you wouldn’t be going bald very fast.

Gates: What’s it look like up there. I mean, it’s like skin back there (points to head).

Scientists: I see hair. Yeah I see hair.

Narration: I was astonished at how much these guys knew about me. The texture of my hair and how much of it i could expect to keep, my fractured right hip, my tortured relationship with milk and ice cream – and thousands of other physical traits —they could see it all by analyzing my DNA. But what about my propensity for diseases?

Joseph Thakuria, MD: You do have a sickle cell trait which has no consequence whatsoever if you don’t have the mutations. We didn’t find any mutations in genes that cause early onset Alzheimer’s.

Gates: Thank you Jesus (laughs). So what you said was, I’m OK?

Thakuria: You're OK.

Gates: Good.

Narration: I also learned that I’m fairly resistant to malaria and am highly tolerant of caffeine – both traits I got from my father.


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