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Inheritance
Inheritance is the passing on of genes from parenis to their offspring.
Inherited genes code for characteristics in offspring such as eye and hair colour.
Meet the Fluffalumps:
Mr. F has dotty fur
whereas Mrs. F
hes plain fur
Mr. F and Mrs. F both have a GENE that codes for whether they have patterned fur or not.
Different versions of a gene are called ALLELES.
One of the alleles codes for dotty fur and in this case is the DOMINANT ALLELE.
Dominant alleles are represented with a CAPITAL LETTER e.g. D
‘The allele for plain fur is therefore RECESSIVE and can be represented with o LOWER
CASE LETTER e.g. d (always use the same letter when it’s the same characteristic, in this
case fur pattern).
All sexually-reproducing organisms inherit two alleles for each characteristic, one from their
Mum and one from their Dad.
‘The combination of the two alleles an individual inherits from its parents is known as its
GENOTYPE.
Genotype is written as two letters, there ave three genotypes an individual may be:
1.) HOMOZYGOUS DOMINANT- they inherited two dominant alleles, one from each
parent e.g. DD
2.) HOMOZYGOUS RECESSIVE- they inherited two recessive alleles, one from each parent
e.g. dd
3.) HETEROZYGOUS - they inherited a dominant allele from one parent and a recessive
allele from the other parent e.g. Dd
‘The dominant allele always MASKS the recessive allele, so an individual who is
heterozygous will show the dominant characteristic @.g. dotty fur.
The characteristic shown is known as the PHENOTYPE of the individual.
The table below shows how this works for the characteristic, fur pattern, in the Fluffalumps:
{Genotypes [Genotype Descriptions! Phenotypes |
DD Homozygous Dominant| Dotty fur
Od Heterozygous Dotty fur
dd Homozygous Recessive| Plain fur
