Question | Answer |
heredity | characteristics received from an organism's parent |
Gregor Mendel | father of Genetics who discovered inheritance while working with garden pea plants |
gene | Segments of DNA found in chromosomes that gives instructions for producing a certain characteristic |
allele | Different “forms” of a gene |
dominant | “expressed” or seen in an organism Represented by a capital letter |
recessive | are not ‘expressed” if a dominant allele is present Represented by a lower case letter |
phenotype | The form of a trait that an organism displays (what it looks like) |
genotype | Organism’s genetic composition (two letter combination) |
polygenic | Inherited characteristics controlled by more than one gene Ex. skin, hair, eyes |
complete dominance | when you have one trait that is dominant over the other |
incomplete dominance | Neither allele is completely dominant or recessive Ex. red x white = pink |
codominance | express both the dominant and recessive trait Ex. spots, stripes or patterns |
heterozygous | He: when you have two different alleles Ex. Tt, Dd, Ee |
homozygous | Ho: when you have two of the same alleles Ex. TT, GG, xx, ff |
hybrid | same as heterozygous; Ex. Tt, Dd, Ee |
punnett square | a tool used to predict genotype of offsprings in a cross |
pedigree | traces the occurrence of a trait through generations of a family |
generations | P Generation: Parents F1 Generation: set of offspring from the parent F2 Generation: set of offspring from the F1 Generation |
probability | a chance that on possible outcome will occur |
ratio | an expression to compare two quantities |
purebred | same as homozygous; Ex. TT, GG, xx, ff |