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 characteristics.
the genetic properties or features of an organism, characteristic, etc. |
genotype | the genetic constitution of an individual organism. |
heterozygous | refers to a pair of genes where one is dominant and one is recessive — they're different. |
homozygous | you've got 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 | (of genes or characters) become 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. |
probability | the extent to which something is probable; the likelihood of something happening or being the case. |
punnett square | 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; a fertilized ovum. |