Genetics 02: Genetics: The Study of Heredity

Genetic is the study of how parents pass their physical traits to their descendants and is first studied in mid 19th century by Gregor Mendel. Mendel discovered that the physical traits of an offspring are not the blend of their parents' traits. Which traits from which parent will be apparent on the offspring is decided by chance, and the apparent traits on the offspring are called dominant traits. However, there are also situations such as co-dominance, which is when both parents' traits are equally expressed. Incomplete dominance is when the traits of both parents are blended together. Multiple alleles is when there are more than two alleles that are given from the parents to the offspring. These situations often varies the genes of the animals in an environment. When cells reproduce, mistakes often happen so the replicated cell will not be completely identical. This situation is called a genetic disorder. Disorders can have a wide variety of effects on the human body, some conditions might make an individual perform better while others might be deleterious to the individual. Another way genes can be varied is gene flow, which happens when new individuals are added into a population of animals and this often happens along with migrations. A genetic drift is when both parents pass the same trait to their offspring which makes the offspring only able to transmit one kind of trait in this physical feature.

There are different dominance situations that affect how an offspring can inherit traits from their parents. Complete dominance is when one allele from one of the parents has affect on the offspring and the other allele holds a silent trait. Partially dominance is when both alleles express their trait, and it results a mix of traits. Codominance is similar to partially dominance except the alleles from both parents blend in this situation therefore the offspring can only pass a mixed trait to their offsprings. Overdominance is when a homozygous (having two identical alleles at the same locus) contains one stronger allele and a weaker one, offsprings with overdominant traits will have this trait even more apparent than their parents.