The dramatic decrease in the cost of sequencing a human genome is leading to an era in which a wide
range of students will benefit from having an understanding of human genetic variation. Since over 90%
of sequence variation between humans is in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a
laboratory exercise has been devised in order to illustrate the importance of SNPs. Two separate SNPs
are analysed, one of which has a significant effect on a person’s phenotype and one which does not.
The genotyping protocol is relatively inexpensive and uses standard molecular biology reagents and
equipment.