Term | Definition |
Allele | One of two or more alternative forms of a gene that arise by mutation and are found at the same place on a chromosome. |
Fertilization | The action or process of fertilizing an egg, female animal, or plant, involving the fusion of male and female gametes to form a zygote. |
Gametes | A mature haploid male or female germ cell that is able to unite with another of the opposite sex in sexual reproduction to form a zygote. |
Gene | A unit of heredity that is transferred from a parent to offspring and is held to determine some characteristic of the offspring. |
Genetics | The study of heredity and the variation of inherited characteristic. |
Genotype | The genetic constitution of an individual organism. |
Heterozygous | A pair of genes where one is dominant and one is recessive. |
Homozygous | A pair of matching alleles, which are the two genes that control a particular trait. |
Hybrid | The offspring of two plants or animals of different species or varieties, such as a mule. |
Assort | Genes or characters being distributed among cells or progeny. |
Meiosis | A type of cell division that results in four daughter cells each with half the number of chromosomes of the parent cell, as in the production of gametes and plant spores. |
Phenotype | The set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment. |
Punnett Square | A diagram that is used to predict an outcome of a particular cross or breeding experiment. |
Zygote | A diploid cell resulting from the fusion of two haploid gametes. |
Chromosome | A threadlike structure of nucleic acids and protein found in the nucleus of most living cells, carrying genetic information in the form of genes. |