Passing traits from parent to offspring.

 Physical characteristics inherited by the offspring from the parents.  Ex. Hair color  Eye color  Skin tone  Ear shape

 Genes are located on your chromosomes  Individuals inherit genes from your parent.  Your cells contain 23 chromosome pairs  Your are literally half your mother and father. You receive half the pair from you mother. You receive half the pair from your father.

 Though the gene may be present on both, the form of the gene may be different  Different forms of the same gene are called alleles.

The study of how traits are inherited through the inactions of alleles.

 Phenotype describes the physical characteristic that is displayed by your genes  Ex. Blue eyes  Genotype describes the actual genes that you have on your DNA  Ex. (blue allele)+(blue allele)

 When paired a dominate allele will cover up the phenotype of a recessive allele.  Dominate alleles are described with a capital letter  Ex. brown eyes (B) or blue (e) produces “Be” a brown eye. “BB” will also produce a brown eye.

 The phenotype for recessive alleles will only appear if two recessive alleles are paired.  Recessive alleles are described with a lower case letter  Ex. A blue eye allele (e) and a blue eye allele (e) produces “ee” blue eyes

 This means “not pure or different.” Allele pairs are heterozygous if the gene pairs are dominate/recessive pairs.  Ex. Ee, Bd, Aa, Ts  This means “pure or the same.” Allele pairs are homozygous if both alleles are either both dominate or both recessive.  Ex. EE, TT, aa, bb, CC, ff