If you have a Mac and are interested in / teach genetics, you absolutely have to check out the Genscope project! This is an amazing (free!) genetics study tool that students find both entertaining and educational. ScienceMan will note the great features over the next couple of days, but trust me, download this terrific software and start playing immediately!

I suggest starting with the "Dragon" species file - one of the features of the program lets you "give birth" to a dragon, then view the alleles on it's chromosomes. By doing so, students can investigate dominance, recessives, co-dominance, sex-linkage, lethal alleles, polygenic traits, and more! For instance, one of the chromosome pairs pictured below for the dragon above indicates that having no wings is governed by a dominant allele... switch both alleles to recessive and wings pop up on the dragon!

I wanted to share a couple of other great features of the program. First, you can study pedigrees very easily by creating individuals and then mating them. A new generation of individuals pops up, which in turn can be mated with new individuals (or themselves);

Examining the phenotypes of the individuals is an easy as clicking on them! You can also choose to view the individuals with symbols representing particular traits. Amazing!

If that isn't enough, Genscope also includes a well developed population study tool to examine the trends in a large gene pool, and the program even includes animations of meiosis and fertilization to illustrate gamete formation and how chromosomes "do their dance" when egg meets sperm. Here's a QuickTime movie of one such meiosis event you'll see;

It should be noted that the GenScope project was made possible by sponsorship provided by the Education and Human Resources Directorate of the National Science Foundation. It's about time that the NSF got a big pat on the back for all resources and effort they have allocated to improving the way computers are used to teach. Talk about time and money well spent!