In this project you can play around with the Mendelian Traits of pea plants! -EXPLANATION- Genes are pieces of genetic code that cause the different traits an organism can have. Genes can have different forms, or different alleles. A Mendelian Trait is a trait that is controlled by only one gene which only has two alleles, one dominant allele and one recessive allele. Each plant has two copies of each gene that make up its genome (complete genetic code), one from each parent. Each plant will pass one (a random one) copy of each of its genes to its offspring, the offspring will get their other copy from their other parent. When a plant has two dominant alleles (e.g. DD) it will have the dominant trait. If it has one dominant and one recessive (e.g. Dd), it will still have the dominant trait. It will only have the recessive trait if it has two recessive alleles (e.g. dd). Normally, a capital letter represents a dominant allele, and a lowercase letter represents a recessive allele, but in this project, each allele and each gene has a different letter. -UNDERSTANDING THE GENETIC CODE- Each plant has a genetic code, made up of a combination of seven Mendelian Traits (seven genes) and 14 alleles. M - dominant allele for pea texture (sMooth peas) k - recessive allele for pea texture (wrinkled peas) Y - dominant allele for pea colour (Yellow peas) g - recessive allele for pea colour (green peas) P - dominant allele for flower colour (Purple flowers) w - recessive allele for flower colour (white flowers) A - dominant allele for flower placement (Axial flowers) r - recessive allele for flower placement (terminal flowers) T - dominant allele for plant height (Tall) s - recessive allele for plant height (short) I - dominant allele for pod form (Inflated pods) c - recessive allele for pod form (constricted pods) N - dominant allele for pod colour (greeN pods) o - recessive allele for pod colour (yellow pods) -GAME PLAY- In this game you can experiment with breeding pea plants with different genetic combinations. Press the up arrow to view a list of your plants and their genes. Press the down arrow to hide this list. Press space to select two plants to breed. Or, select the same plant twice to self-pollinate it. You need to enter numbers, e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc. Click on the display plants to change which plant it shows. The number of the plant displayed is show in a variable below the plant. The "Challenge" genes are a random selection of genes that you are challenged to breed. To view what this random plant would look like or to submit one of you plants to the challenge, press the right arrow key. Press the left arrow key to close this challenge window. Press the "Check Challenge" button in the challenge window and enter the number of the plant you want to submit to the challenge. If your plant's genes match the challenge genes, you will gain 100 points and a new challenge will generate. Please note that the project doesn't care what order the dominant and recessive alleles are in. E.g. if the challenge reads "MkgY" and your submission reads "kMYg" it wont matter, as long as they both have the right combination of dominant and recessive alleles for the right traits. You can also generate a random plant to add to your list by pressing the "Generate Random Plant" button. Breed plants by pressing the "Breed New Plant" button after you have selected breeding plants. The new plant will appear in your list of plants. If you encounter any glitches or issues please let me know! I tried to fix as many as I could, but I may have missed a few.
