Grayce P. Storey
A lot of students look to athletes as a role model and in so doing, they want to become another generation of Michael Jordans. In their searching they have added new words and meanings to their vocabularies. These words and meanings are helping them to come to understand the probabilities of being tall or short.
Heredity is the transferring of developmental potentialities from one generation of living organisms to the following generations. These potentialities reside in the chromosomes of body cells.
It was Gregor Mendel, in the 1860’s, who began analyzing hybrid pea plants to see if he could find a pattern in the characters handed down from one generation to the next. Mendel and his successors reasoned that, characters genes were the vehicle and repository of the heredity mechanism and each inherited trait or function of an organism had a gene directing its development and appearance. However,
Mendel did not know the location of the genes. It was not until the late 19th century that new microscopes and dyes were improved which aided in locating the genes. In the early 20th century Mendel’s work was rediscovered and fully appreciated.
Genetics is a branch of biology which has to do with heredity and the variations between parents and offspring.
The following are the basic principals of genetics:
1. Traits or characteristics are handed down from one generation of organisms to the next generation.
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2. The traits of an organism are controlled by the genes.
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3. Organisms inherit genes in pairs—one from each parent.
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4. Some genes are dominant shile others are recessive.
5. Dominant genes mask recessive genes when both are inherited by an organism.
Traits or genes are located on the chromosomes. The chromosomes are rod-like structures located in the nucleus of cells of all plant and animals. The main function of chromosomes is to control the production of proteins which consequently control the traits of plants and animals.