Sex & Gender Determination: Quick site review

[Sean Nash]

Use this forum to share a website you found particularly interesting or informative on the topic of sex & gender determination. After surveying the site, and seeing what it has to offer, come back into the forum, link to the site, and describe what the reader/viewer can expect to find there. I'm guessing that all searches from school should be smart with the word "sex" (unfortunately) since that word is so often pulled out by web filtering software. Unfortunately, even our very liberal filtering policies here tend to squeeze biology content a little bit from time to time.

Vary search terms to find unique sites, and remember: you cannot re-post one that has appeared before you in the thread. Try to mix & match: "gender", "sex", "determination" "genetic", "genetics", "gamete", gametes", etc.

Be sure to be as discriminating as possible when evaluating sites. For example, this site is one of the top returns in Google when entering the following simple search: "gender determination". Do you think the information on this site is based more on science, or folklore? This exercise will certainly be more challenging than the last two, considering those topic are rarely ever addressed outside of scientific circles. Put more simply: you're going to have to get past the first page of results from an open search engine.

Also, keep in mind that this prompt doesn't necessarily confine you to sex determination in humans, does it? It would also be interesting to see how this may vary among differing groups of animals.

When you post... if it is a simple link to a site, post that link and also perhaps links to other pages within that you would like to direct your classmates to. If you have a really nice piece of video that you can embed directly into the discussion, do that here as well.

Be sure to tell us: why you chose the site. Why did this one stick out to you? Why does it do a good job of teaching the processes involved with sex determination? What is a criticism of the site if any? Is there something that could be added to make it perfect? What is the main thing you learned already from your brief review of this website? Since we need to look over all of these sites and provides comments, we won't have time to explore each site as deeply as you did. So- direct us specifically to what you determine to be the "good stuff."

[Kaylee Burris]

On this site there was a CNN video I found and I thought it was really interesting. It was interesting to see that a lot of people in Canada want girls, and other in different areas just want boys.
Ok this is the website that I found the CNN video, it has many great videos to see.
I recomend looking at the 60 minutes video it's interesting.
This web sites videos made it stand out to me and with those videos it taught us a lot about choosing the gender of your baby.

[kristen sheehan]

I really don't think that I would ever want to choose the gender of my baby, that is the suprise though of pregnancy! I don't know that's just my opinion!! :-) But Kaylee this was a really cool piece you found! I think that technology is going to be able to one day just build a baby for you. Like the perfect baby I guess you'd say!

But anyways great job!

[kristen sheehan]

This website was very helpful to me. It goes into detail about how there are different types of sex determining systems. It is really cool because there are different types for different types of organisms.

I'm not quite sure if this is what this discussion was looking for, but if not let me know!!! :-)

[Sean Nash]

Can you give us some examples of specifics you learned from this page?

[kristen sheehan]

Well one of the coolest thing that I learned from this website is that other organisms have different sex chromosomes than we do. I know that comment may sound a little stupid, but I never really thought about that. I think it's that before DC Biology I never thought about the world around me in such detail.

[Chris Michaels]

Yes atleast someone used Wikipedia... going against what we have always been told that wikipedia is a site for the false mnded. i really like wiki though because it tells all the little details.

[Taylor Snider]

This site was very informative. Wikipedia usually has some good information. Good job.

[Abby Lucas]

Kristen, you took the easy way out with Wikipedia. BUUUT I do love Wikipedia, so good choice. It always seems to explain things in simple, easy ways with headings and what not.

[Kaylee Burris]

It was really interesting to learn more about different types of sex chromosomes and how they differ from our sex chromosomes. Also learning that certain insects have either XX (female) or XO(male) but the O means there is nothing there. So when the egg is fertalized by sperm with an X its a female and when it is fertalized with sperm that has nothing its a male, interesting.

[Tori Scott]

KRISTEN :)

Ok so although this site is very informative you have to be careful. If you've ever noticed Wikapedia can be changed by anyone. So there is always a chance that its not completely true. I guess there is always a chance of that though.... Anyways good job!

[Erin McAndrews]

I thought this was really informative. Got to love wikipedia! :)

[Tori Scott]

My website was very interesting to me. Its mostly about gender determination but it does a really good job of explaining it in depth. It talks about crossing over in pseudoautosomal regions. One thing i found was the most interesting to me was that it said femaleness is the "default" program, which you can further read about on page 2.
This also goes into detail about both x and y genes. This site talks more about gender in mice then humans but i figured that it was the same concept. (hope so or i'll feel stupid)