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Genes- the basic unit of heredity, that determines what traits will be…
Genes- the basic unit of heredity, that determines what traits will be passed down from biological parent to offspring
Phenotype- the physical appearance/characteristic of the living organism that is the result of the genotype
Example: If, in a cat, B= white fur/dominant and b= black fur/recessive, and the genotype was bb, then the phenotype would correspond with the recessive gene, and the cat would have black fur.
Gregor Mendel- an Austrian monk who bred pea plants, analyzing many results to understand how individual genes worked. He created Mendel's Laws of Inheritance
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Dominance- a gene with a dominant allele shows the same phenotype in both heterozygotes and homozygotes; in heterozygote cases, the dominant allele always covers the recessive allele
Segregation- in a diploid organism, chromosome pairs are separated into individual gametes (sex cells- eggs or sperm) to give genetic info to the next generation
Alleles- different versions of the same gene; for any gene, one may either have two of the same alleles or two different ones
Example: an allele is either a dominant or a recessive; depending on the alleles paired up from the parents, there are different chances of getting a certain allele
Dominant allele- an allele that is always expressed, even if the offspring only has one copy of it; when there is a heterozygous trait (a dominant and a recessive), the dominant allele will always show
Example: B= purple colour plant/dominant, b= white colour plant/recessive; when the genotype is Bb or BB, the plant will be purple coloured
Recessive allele- an allele that can be covered up by a dominant allele; to produce a recessive trait, there must be two copies of it, with no dominant allele present
Example: B= brown eyes/dominant, b= blue eyes/recessive; only when the genotype is bb does the offspring have blue eyes- even if the offspring gets Bb, the dominant allele will cover the recessive one (b)
Genotype- the set of genes a living organism has, rather than its physical traits
Example: Using the example from phenotype, if we already knew the recessive and dominant traits and saw the cat, we would immediately know what its genotype would be (bb, as recessive genes can only have lowercase homozygous genotypes)
(example and picture do not connect; the picture just gives you another idea on what genotypes and phenotypes are)
Mutation- a random change within an organism's genes, making it different from others of the same kind
Example: In asexual reproduction, the parent organism produces offspring that are exact copies. The only way the offspring might get new material is through mutation.
Cloning- the process of creating an organism in a laboratory that is an exact copy of another using the original animal’s or plant’s DNA
Example: Dolly the Sheep was the first cloned mammal, created artificially in 1996. Since then, there has also been quite a few more Dollys made.

Gene therapy- a medical treatment that cures a certain illness in your body by putting genes into your body cells
Example: If one has (for example) sickle cell anemia or muscular dystrophy, caused by defects in single genes, a normal allele may be inserted into those defective cells
Questions
Are there things that genetics are unable to determine? What are some of those, and how are thew determined?
Gametes normally have only one copy of each gene, but what happens if a gamete has more than one? How will that affect the offspring?