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Nature of Science:

NOS3

NOS9

Other Science Strands:

BW10

BW3

(Justification of said LOs provided in another strand)

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Copy of Starting Planning - Contextual Strands (2)

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BW2: Students should be able to describe asexual and sexual reproduction; explore patterns in the inheritance and variation of genetically controlled characteristics

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Links to Key skills and Important Principles

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Links to Key skills and Important Principles

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Lesson Plan One Resource: Phet Simulation

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Lesson Plan One Resource: Phet Simulation

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Explore how organisms with different traits survive various selection agents within the environment.

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Lesson Plan One and Two Resource: Punnet Square Sample Questions and Definitions

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Lesson Plan One and Two Resource: Punnet Square Sample Questions and Definitions

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Variation | Genetics |  Biology | FuseSchool

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Lesson Plan One Resource: Fingerprint Experiment ( Experiment in lesson plan was influenced by this website)

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Lesson Plan One Resource: Fingerprint Experiment ( Experiment in lesson plan was influenced by this website)

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Abstract

Have you ever looked at two girls and thought they looked so similar that they must be sisters? What about a father and his son - have you ever seen a boy who looked just like how his father did when he was younger? We can often tell that two people are related because they appear to have several similar physical traits. This is because children receive half of their DNA - their genetic blueprints - from each parent. What about fingerprints - are they an inherited trait? Fingerprints are used as reliable identification because each person's fingerprints are unique, but people can have similar fingerprint patterns. In this science project, you will investigate whether fingerprint patterns are created randomly or whether they are influenced by genetics.

Summary

Objective

Collect, categorize, and compare the fingerprints of siblings versus unrelated pairs of individuals to determine if fingerprint patterns are inherited.

Introduction

During weeks 10 through 24 of gestation (when a fetus is developing inside of its mother's womb, also called in utero), ridges form on the epidermis, which is the outermost layer of skin, on the fingertips of the fetus. The pattern that these ridges make is known as a fingerprint, and looks like the drawing shown in Figure 1, below.

Fingerprints are static and do not change with age, so an individual will have the same fingerprint from infancy to adulthood. The pattern changes size, but not shape, as the person grows. (To get a better idea of how that works, you can model the change in size by inking your fingerprint onto a balloon and then blowing up the balloon.) Since each person has unique fingerprints that do not change over time, they can be used for identification. For example, police use fingerprints to determine whether a particular individual has been at a crime scene. Although the exact number, shape, and spacing of the ridges changes from person to person, fingerprints can be sorted into three general categories based on their pattern type: loop, arch, and whorl, as shown in Figure 2, below.

The DNA that a person inherits from their parents determines many personal characteristics and traits, like whether someone is right- or left-handed or the color of their eyes. In this science project, you will examine fingerprints from siblings versus pairs of unrelated individuals to figure out if general fingerprint patterns are genetic or random. Have you ever looked at two girls and said, "you must be sisters"? We can often tell that two people are siblings because they appear to have several similar physical traits. This is because children receive half their DNA from each parent. All biological siblings are the mixture of both parents' DNA. This results in a greater degree of matching traits between siblings than between unrelated individuals. Therefore, if DNA determines fingerprint patterns, then siblings are more likely to share the same fingerprint category than two unrelated individuals are.

Terms and Concepts

Questions

What does it mean to be biologically related?

What are fingerprints and how are they formed?

What procedures do officials, like the police, use to record fingerprints?

What are the different types or classes of fingerprints?

Bibliography

This FBI webpage describes how to take fingerprints:

This University of California, Santa Barbara, webpage gives information on how fingerprints are formed:

This Wikipedia entry gives an overview of fingerprints and their history.

Wikipedia contributors. (2014, April 20). Fingerprints. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 7, 2014.

Materials and Equipment

Paper towel

Moist towelettes for cleaning hands

White printer paper, tracing paper, or parchment paper

Pencil

Clear tape

Scissors

White paper

Sibling pairs (at least 15)

Unrelated pairs of people (at least 15)

Optional: Magnifying glass

Lab notebook

Experimental Procedure

To start this science project, practice taking reliable, clear fingerprints. First try the technique on yourself, then ask a friend or family member to let you learn by using his or her fingerprints.

1. To make an ink pad variation, rub a pencil on a piece of printer paper, parchment paper, or tracing paper several times until an area of about 3 by 3 centimeters (cm) is completely grey, as shown in Figure 3 (the paper on the left).

2. Use a moist towelette to clean the person's right index finger.

3. Thoroughly dry the finger with a paper towel.

4. Press and slide each side of the the right index fingertip one time over the pad

5. Then roll the grey fingertip onto the sticky side of a piece of clear tape. The result will look like the tape in Figure 3.

6. Use another towelette to clean the person's grey finger.

7. Cut off the piece of tape containing the fingerprint and stick it onto a piece of white paper, as shown in Figure 3.

8. Perfect your technique until the fingerprints come out clear each time.

9. When your prints start to fade, rub your pencil a couple of times over your pad and try again.

1. Make up a consent form for your science project. Because fingerprints can be used to identify people, you will need their consent to take and use their fingerprints. The Science Buddies resource on Projects Involving Human Subjects will give you some additional information on getting consent.

2. Collect fingerprints of pairs of siblings and of pairs of unrelated people.

1. Make sure they sign a consent form before you take the fingerprint.

2. Use the cleaning and printing system you developed in step 1 to take one fingerprint of each person's right index finger.

3. Label each fingerprint with a unique code, which will tell you which pair the fingerprint belongs to and whether that is a sibling pair or an unrelated pair. An example of an appropriate code would be to assign each pair a number and each individual a letter. Siblings would be labeled as subjects A and B, while unrelated individuals would be labeled as subjects D and Z. Thus, fingerprints from a sibling pair might carry the codes 10A and 10B while fingerprints from a unrelated pair might be labeled 11D and 11Z.

4. Collect fingerprints from at least 15 sibling pairs and 15 unrelated pairs. For unrelated pairs, you can actually reuse your sibling data by pairing them up differently. As an example, you could pair sibling 1A with sibling 2B since these individuals are not related to each other. The more pairs you look at in your science project, the stronger your conclusions will be! For a more in-depth look at how the number of participants affects the reliability of your conclusions, see the Science Buddies resource Sample Size: How Many Survey Participants Do I Need?

3. Examine each fingerprint and characterize it as a whorl, arch, or loop pattern. You can use a magnifying glass if you have one. In your lab notebook, make a data table like Table 1, creating a separate row for each person, and fill it out.

1. To analyze your data, calculate the percentage of related pairs whose fingerprint patterns match and the percentage of unrelated pairs whose fingerprint patterns match. Advanced students can calculate the margin of error. The Science Buddies resource Sample Size: How Many Survey Participants Do I Need? can help you with this.

2. Make a visual representation of your data. A pie chart or bar graph will work well for this data. Advanced students can indicate the margin of error on their graph.

3. Compare the percentage of related pairs whose fingerprint patterns match to the percentage of unrelated pairs whose fingerprint patterns match.

1. Are they the same? Is the difference significant taking the margin of error into account? Which one is higher?

2. What does this tell you about whether fingerprint patterns are genetic?

3. Identical twins share 100% of their DNA. Does your data include any identical twins? Do they have the same fingerprint pattern?

Ask an Expert

Variations

How do your results change if you compare all 10 fingers, rather than just 1? Do all 10 fingers from the same person have the same fingerprint?

Toes also have ridge patterns. Do "toe prints" follow the same rules as fingerprints?

Are some patterns more common than others?

If you make more quantitative measurements of the fingerprint patterns, can they be used to predict sibling pairs? With what degree of accuracy?

If fingerprints are unique, why do misidentifications occur in forensics? How easy or hard is it to match a fingerprint with an individual?

Read about statistics and use a mathematical test (like Fisher's exact test) to determine if your findings are statistically relevant. To do this, you will need to make sure you understand p values and you will need to think about whether your sample size is large enough. Online calculators, like the one from GraphPad Software, are good resources for this analysis.

Careers

If you like this project, you might enjoy exploring these related careers:

Guilty or not guilty? The fate of the accused in court lies with the evidence gathered at the crime scene. The job of the forensic science technician is to gather evidence and use scientific principles and techniques to make sense of it. It can be a grueling and graphic job, but very rewarding. If you like the idea of using science to help deliver justice, then you should investigate this career. Read more

Many decisions regarding a person's health depend on knowing the patient's genetic risk of having a disease. Genetic counselors help assess those risks, explain them to patients, and counsel individuals and families about their options. Read more

I have black hair, you have blonde hair. I have blue eyes, you have brown eyes. These, and other characteristics, describe what we look like, how tall we are, and even what our personality is, and they are all controlled by our chromosomes. Chromosomes are packages within each of our cells that hold our genes. Our chromosomes also determine if we might inherit any genetic diseases or if birth defects are present. Extracting, testing, and examining the chromosomes from cells is the job of the... Read more

News Feed on This Topic

Note: A computerized matching algorithm suggests the above articles. It's not as smart as you are, and it may occasionally give humorous, ridiculous, or even annoying results! Learn more about the News Feed

Cite This Page

General citation information is provided here. Be sure to check the formatting, including capitalization, for the method you are using and update your citation, as needed.

MLA Style

Science Buddies Staff. "Are Fingerprint Patterns Inherited?" Science Buddies, 23 June 2020, https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Genom_p009/genetics-genomics/are-fingerprint-patterns-inherited. Accessed 23 Mar. 2022.

APA Style

Science Buddies Staff. (2020, June 23). Are Fingerprint Patterns Inherited? Retrieved from https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Genom_p009/genetics-genomics/are-fingerprint-patterns-inherited

Explore Our Science Videos

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Are Fingerprint Patterns Inherited? | Science Project

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Have you ever looked at two girls and thought they looked so similar that they must be sisters? What about a father and his son - have you ever seen a boy who looked just like how his father did when he was younger?

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Reflective Worksheet for Lesson Plan One

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Reflective Worksheet for Lesson Plan One

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Resource for Lesson Plan Two to Gather Prior Knowledge for Lesson

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Resource for Lesson Plan Two to Gather Prior Knowledge for Lesson

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Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The progress being made by technology in a restorative and therapeutic context could in theory be applied in other contexts to treat non-pathological conditions. Many of the technologies and pharmaceutical products developed in a medical context to treat patients are already being used by humans to 'enhance' some aspect of their bodies, for example drugs to boost brain power, nutritional supplements, brain stimulating technologies to control mood or growth hormones for children of short stature. Assistive technology for disabled people, reproductive medicine and pharmacology, beside their therapeutic and restorative use, have a greater potential for human 'enhancement' than currently thought. There are also dual outcomes as some therapies can have effects that amount to an enhancement as for example, the artificial legs used by the South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius providing him with a competitive advantage.

This commentary will provide general ethical considerations on human enhancement, and within the several forms of so-called human biomedical enhancement, it will focus on genetic engineering, particularly on germline (heritable) genetic interventions and on the insights evolutionary biology can provide in rationalizing its likely impact. These insights are a subject often limited in discussions on genetic engineering and human enhancement in general, and its links to ethical, philosophical and policy discussions, in particular [ 9]. The rapid advances in genetic technology make this debate very topical. Moreover, genes are thought to play a very substantial role in biological evolution and development of the human species, thus making this a topic requiring due consideration. With this commentary, we explore how concepts based in evolutionary biology could contribute to better assess the implications of human germline modifications, assuming they were widely employed. We conclude our brief analysis by summarizing key issues requiring resolution and potential approaches to progress them. Overall, the aim is to contribute to the debate on human genetic enhancement by looking not only at the future, as it is so often done, but also at our evolutionary past.

HUMAN ENHANCEMENT

The noun 'enhancement' comes from the verb 'enhance', meaning 'to increase or improve'. The verb enhance can be traced back to the vulgar Latin inaltiare and late Latin inaltare ('raise, exalt'), from ' altare' ('make high') and altus ('high'), literally 'grown tall'. For centuries human enhancement has populated our imagination outlined by stories ranging from the myths of supernormal strengths and eternal life to the superpowers illustrated by the 20th century comic books superheroes. The desire of overcoming normal human capacities and the transformation to an almost 'perfect' form has been part of the history of civilization, extending from arts and religion to philosophy. The goal of improving the human condition and health has always been a driver for innovation and biomedical developments.

In the broadest sense, the process of human enhancement can be considered as an improvement of the 'limitations' of a 'natural version' of the human species with respect to a specific reference in time, and to different environments, which can vary depending on factors such as, for example, climate change. The limitations of the human condition can be physical and/or mental/cognitive (e.g. vision, strength or memory). This poses relevant questions of what a real or perceived human limitation is in the environment and times in which we are living and how it can be shifted over time considering social norms and cultural values of modern societies. Besides, the impact that overcoming these limitations will have on us humans, and the environment, should also be considered. For example, if we boost the immune system of specific people, this may contribute to the development/evolution of more resistant viruses and bacteria or/and lead to new viruses and bacteria to emerge. In environmental terms, enhancing the longevity of humans could contribute to a massive increase in global population, creating additional pressures on ecosystems already under human pressure.

Ethical and societal discussions on what constitutes human enhancement will be fundamental to support the development of policy frameworks and regulations on new technological developments. When considering the ethical implications of human enhancement that technology will be available to offer now and in the future, it could be useful to group the different kinds of human enhancements in the phenotypic and genetic categories: (i) strictly phenotypic intervention (e.g. ranging from infrared vision spectacles to exoskeletons and bionic limbs); (ii) somatic, non-heritable genetic intervention (e.g. editing of muscle cells for stronger muscles) and (iii) germline, heritable genetic intervention (e.g. editing of the C-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) gene in the Chinese baby twins, discussed later on). These categories of enhancement raise different considerations and concerns and currently present different levels of acceptance by our society. The degree of ethical, societal and environmental impacts is likely to be more limited for phenotypic interventions (i) but higher for genetic interventions (ii and iii), especially for the ones which are transmissible to future generations (iii).

GENETIC ENGINEERING

The rapid advances in technology seen in the last decades, have raised the possibility of 'radical enhancement', defined by Nicholas Agar, 'as the improvement of human attributes and abilities to levels that greatly exceed what is currently possible for human beings' [ 24]. Genetic engineering offers the possibility of such an enhancement by providing humans a profound control over their own biology. Among other technologies, genetic engineering comprises genome editing (also called gene editing), a group of technologies with the ability to directly modify an organism's DNA through a targeted intervention in the genome (e.g. insertion, deletion or replacement of specific genetic material) [ 25]. Genome editing is considered to achieve much greater precision than pre-existing forms of genetic engineering. It has been argued to be a revolutionary tool due to its efficiency, reducing cost and time. This technology is considered to have many applications for human health, in both preventing and tackling disease. Much of the ethical debate associated with this technology concerns the possible application of genome editing in the human germline, i.e. the genome that can be transmitted to following generations, be it from gametes, a fertilized egg or from first embryo divisions [ 26-28]. There has been concern as well as enthusiasm on the potential of the technology to modify human germline genome to provide us with traits considered positive or useful (e.g. muscle strength, memory and intelligence) in the current and future environments.

Genetic engineering: therapy or enhancement and predictability of outcomes

To explore some of the possible implications of heritable interventions we will take as an example the editing (more specifically 'deletion' using CRISPR genome editing technology) of several base pairs of the CCR5 gene. Such intervention was practised in 2018 in two non-identical twin girls born in China. Loss of function mutations of the CCR5 had been previously shown to provide resistance to HIV. Therefore, the gene deletion would be expected to protect the twin baby girls from risk of transmission of HIV which could have occurred from their father (HIV-positive). However, the father had the infection kept under control and the titre of HIV virus was undetectable, which means that risk of transmission of HIV infection to the babies was negligible [ 29].

From an ethical ground, based on current acceptable practices, this case has been widely criticized by the scientific community beside being considered by many a case of human enhancement intervention rather than therapy [ 29, 30]. One of the questions this example helps illustrate is that the ethical boundary between a therapy that 'corrects' a disorder by restoring performance to a 'normal' scope, and an intervention that 'enhances' human ability outside the accepted 'normal' scope, is not always easy to draw. For the sake of argument, it could be assumed that therapy involves attempts to restore a certain condition of health, normality or sanity of the 'natural' condition of a specific individual. If we take this approach, the question is how health, normality and sanity, as well as natural per se, are defined, as the meaning of these concepts shift over time to accommodate social norms and cultural values of modern societies. It could be said that the difficulty of developing a conceptual distinction between therapy and enhancement has always been present. However, the potential significance of such distinction is only now, with the acceleration and impact of technological developments, becoming more evident.

Genetic engineering and human evolution: large-scale impacts

Beyond providing the opportunity of enhancing human capabilities in specific individuals, intervening in the germline is likely to have an impact on the evolutionary processes of the human species raising questions on the scale and type of impacts. In fact, the use of large-scale genetic engineering might exponentially increase the force of 'niche construction' in human evolution, and therefore raise ethical and practical questions never faced by our species before. It has been argued that natural selection is a mechanism of lesser importance in the case of current human evolution, as compared to other organisms, because of advances in medicine and healthcare [ 35]. According to such a view, among many others advances, natural selection has been conditioned by our 'niche-construction' ability to improve healthcare and access to clean water and food, thus changing the landscape of pressures that humans have been facing for survival. An underlying assumption or position of the current debate is that, within our human species, the force of natural selection became minimized and that we are somehow at the 'end-point' of our evolution [ 36]. If this premise holds true, one could argue that evolution is no longer a force in human history and hence that any human enhancement would not be substituting itself to human evolution as a key driver for future changes.

However, it is useful to remember that, as defined by Darwin in his book 'On the Origin of the Species', natural selection is a process in which organisms that happen to be 'better' adapted to a certain environment tend to have higher survival and/or reproductive rates than other organisms [ 37]. When comparing human evolution to human genetic enhancement, an acceptable position could be to consider ethically sound those interventions that could be replicated naturally by evolution, as in the case of the CCR5 gene. Even if this approach was taken, however, it is important to bear in mind that human evolution acts on human traits sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing our biological fitness, in a constant evolutionary trade-off and in a contingent and/or neutral-in the sense of not 'progressive'-process. In other worlds, differently from genetic human enhancement, natural selection does not ' aim' at improving human traits [ 38]. Human evolution and the so-called genetic human enhancement would seem therefore to involve different underlying processes, raising several questions regarding the implications and risks of the latter.

When considering the ethical and societal merits of these propositions, it is useful to consider how proto-forms of enhancement has been approached by past human societies. In particular, it can be argued that humans have already employed-as part of our domestication/'selective breeding' of other animals-techniques of indirect manipulation of genomes on a relatively large scale over many millennia, albeit not on humans. The large-scale selective breeding of plants and animals over prehistoric and historic periods could be claimed to have already shaped some of our natural environment. Selective breeding has been used to obtain specific characteristics considered useful at a given time in plants and animals. Therefore, their evolutionary processes have been altered with the aim to produce lineages with advantageous traits, which contributed to the evolution of different domesticated species. However, differently from genetic engineering, domestication possesses inherent limitations in its ability to produce major transformations in the created lineages, in contrast with the many open possibilities provided by genetic engineering.

Beyond such considerations, it is useful to reflect on the fact that human genetic enhancement could occur on different geographical scales, regardless of the specific environment and geological periods in which humans are living and much more rapidly than in the case of evolution, in which changes are very slow. If this was to occur routinely and on a large scale, the implications of the resulting radical and abrupt changes may be difficult to predict and its impacts difficult to manage. This is currently highlighted by results of epigenetics studies, and also of the microbiome and of the effects of pollutants in the environment and their cumulative effect on the development of human and non-human organisms alike. Increasingly new evidence indicates a greater interdependence between humans and their environments (including other microorganisms), indicating that modifying the environment can have direct and unpredictable consequences on humans as well. This highlight the need of a 'systems level' approach. An approach in which the 'bounded body' of the individual human as a basic unit of biological or social action would need to be questioned in favour of a more encompassing and holistic unit. In fact, within biology, there is a new field, Systems Biology, which stresses the need to understand the role that pleiotropy, and thus networks at multiple levels-e.g. genetic, cellular, among individuals and among different taxa-play within biological systems and their evolution [ 46]. Currently, much still needs to be understood about gene function, its role in human biological systems and the interaction between genes and external factors such as environment, diet and so on. In the future if we do choose to genetically enhance human traits to levels unlikely to be achieved by human evolution, it would be crucial to consider if and how our understanding of human evolution enable us to better understand the implications of genetic interventions.

CONCLUSIONS

New forms of human enhancement are increasingly coming to play due to technological development. If phenotypic and somatic interventions for human enhancement pose already significant ethical and societal challenges, germline heritable genetic intervention, require much broader and complex considerations at the level of the individual, society and human species as a whole. Germline interventions associated with modern technologies are capable of much more rapid, large-scale impacts and seem capable of radically altering the balance of humans with the environment. We know now that beside the role genes play on biological evolution and development, genetic interventions can induce multiple effects (pleiotropy) and complex epigenetics interactions among genotype, phenotype and ecology of a certain environment. As a result of the rapidity and scale with which such impact could be realized, it is essential for ethical and societal debates, as well as underlying scientific studies, to consider the unit of impact not only to the human body but also to human populations and their natural environment (systems biology). An important practicable distinction between 'therapy' and 'enhancement' may need to be drawn and effectively implemented in future regulations, although a distinct line between the two may be difficult to draw.

In the future if we do choose to genetically enhance human traits to levels unlikely to be achieved by human evolution, it would be crucial to consider if and how our understanding of humans and other organisms, including domesticated ones, enable us to better understand the implications of genetic interventions. In particular, effective regulation of genetic engineering may need to be based on a deep knowledge of the exact links between phenotype and genotype, as well the interaction of the human species with the environment and vice versa.

For a broader and consistent debate, it will be essential for technological, philosophical, ethical and policy discussions on human enhancement to consider the empirical evidence provided by evolutionary biology, developmental biology and other disciplines.

FUNDING

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) of Portugal [CFCUL/FIL/00678/2019 to M.A.].

Conflict of interest: None declared.

REFERENCES

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Human enhancement: Genetic engineering and evolution

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The progress being made by technology in a restorative and therapeutic context could in theory be applied in other contexts to treat non-pathological conditions. Many of the technologies and pharmaceutical products developed in a medical context to treat patients are already being used by humans to 'enhance' some aspect of their bodies, for example drugs to boost brain power, nutritional supplements, brain stimulating technologies to control mood or growth hormones for children of short stature.

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Resource for Lesson Plan Two: Mice Comparison

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Resource for Lesson Plan Two: Mice Comparison

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Second lesson plan padlet science pedagogy

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Resource for Lesson Plan Two: Applications of Genetic Engineering

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Resource for Lesson Plan Two: Applications of Genetic Engineering

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Resource For Lesson Plan Two To Gather Prior Knowledge for Lesson

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Resource For Lesson Plan Two To Gather Prior Knowledge for Lesson

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Visual interpretation of modern day genetics and their evolution

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Visual interpretation of modern day genetics and their evolution