*Make sure to read the entire process before beginning to work on it.

Before we begin our study into the couple's family tree, we must first acquire some background knowledge about the two diseases we are studying. While you and your colleagues are expert geneticists, you do not have any experience or know much about malaria and its intricate relationship with sickle-cell anemia, a hereditary disease. The couple that has hired your team of experts needs advice immediately, however, so to speed up the process of giving them advice, you are tasked with watching a short 5 minute video that describes the relationship between malaria and sickle-cell anemia, and how it ties into the Mendelian genetics material you have been learning over the past couple of days. This video is titled Evolution of Sickle-Cell & Malaria and can be viewed here!

Now that you and your team have a basic understanding of the situation that is present in malaria-ridden parts of Africa, it is time to get to know the couple that has sought your help. Both Robert and Chelsie have been affected by the malaria/sickle-cell relationship in their lifetime, and want you to look at their family tree and genetic make-up to find out the chances that their child will be born with sickle-cell anemia.

• Husband: Robert is a healthy adult is the only child in his immediate family. Although Robert and his father do not have sickle-cell anemia, his mother does. Robert was also married once before to a healthy woman before getting divorced and meeting Chelsie. While Robert and his ex-wife were both healthy, they somehow had a daughter that was born with sickle-cell anemia. Because Robert has had to worry about two important people in his life dealing with sickle-cell, and know how hard sickle-cell can make it to live an enjoyable life, he would like to know the chances of him and Chelsie's future children being born with the heritable disease.
• Wife: Chelsie comes from a family of 6. She is also a healthy adult, but has had her life affected by sickle-cell too. Along with Chelsie, both of her parents and along with her brother and sister are healthy individuals without sickle-cell. Unfortunatey, however, Chelsie  had a brother that died of sickle-cell anemia at an early age. Because of this tragic death in the family, Chelsie does not want to go through that experience again, and would like to know the chances her children would be born with sickle-cell.

Your first task will be to make sense of the information by modelling it into a pedigree chart. You and your team of scientists have been hard at work studying pedigree charts the past few days and know how much it easier it makes the data appear. Together with your team, use a large blank sheet of paper with your names at the top to create a pedigree chart using Robert and Chelsie's family information. Make sure to include each person mentioned in the family history, and also to create a symbol legend so that Robert and Chelsie understand what they are looking at when you present them your findings.

Now that you have all the data organized in the pedigree chart, it is time to use that information to find out the probability that Robert and Chelsie will have a child born with sickle-cell disease. To figure this out you will have to utilize your knowledge of pedigree charts, Punnett squares, and probabilites in order to find the correct chances of the child being born with sickle-cell. It is very important that you use the correct methods when figuring this out, because you do not want to give Robert and Chelsie false information about a very important decision in their lives.

In case you have forgotten any of the material required in order to complete this exercise, go to the resources page to quickly review at the listed websites.

Once you have discovered the probability that the couple will have a child born with sickle-cell, it is time summarize the information into a short paragraph report that will make the information easy for Robert and Chelsie to figure out. In the report, you and your team should include the probability that the child will be born with sickle-cell and the probability that the child will not be born with sickle-cell. Also in the report, you should identify Robert and Chelsie's genotypes and explain how these genotypes, along with the possible genotype of their future child should influence where they should live in Africa. Finally, based on you and your team's personal and professional opinion, make a recommendation to Robert and Chelsie on whether or not they should conceive a child.

Continue on to the evaluation page once you have completed and turned in your work.