Genetics: Karyotype

 Karyotypes are literally picture of chromosomes taken through a microscope, and they are used to screen for major genetic abnormalities.

In our case, we used these sample karyotypes to cut and paste homologous chromosomes and sort by size (the largest chromosomes are chromosome 1, and the smallest are chromosome 22).

A word of caution, the site provides some karyotypes showing chromosomal damage (trisomy 21, for example).  It's important to use the normal examples first, and move on to the abnormal ones if you want to do more karyotyping later (otherwise, it can be very confusing).







I had my girls do normal girl karyotypes, and the boys do normal boy karyotypes.

They enjoyed it, and it really helped them understand the homologous chromosomes and chromatids.