Sunday, March 13, 2011

Heredity

        S'up, peeps? How ya doin'? Y'all gonna learn 'bout heredity! Okay, so you're probably wondering what heredity is. Or not, if you've already learned it, or if you're a science professor, or a biology professor, ect. Heredity is 'The passing on of physical and metabolic traits from generation to generation'.     
        Heredity is very important. If you didn't have it, you wouldn't have your hair color, eye color, skin tone, and so on. You get all those and more from genes. Genes are segments of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that carry instructions for the 'traits' of a child. So, if you have brown eyes, maybe that was passed down to you from your father, if he has brown eyes, of course.
        Gregor Mandel was the first to figure out heredity, and how DNA worked. This is why he is called the Father of Genetics. Compared to most people back then, he's not that bad looking. At least he could shave. He experimented on pea plants. He crossed a tall pea plan and a short pea plant together. He thought that the offspring would be a mix of both, but to his surprise, the offspring was a tall pea plant. Personally, I would not have experimented on pea plants because I do not like peas. But maybe he did. Who knows?
        The tall allele was the dominant allele. Allele is just another word for gene. The short gene is called a recessive allele. Dominant allele means that it overpowers the recessive allele. It means that it's more common. Recessive means it  isn't as common. For example, brown eyes are a dominant allele, while blue eyes could be a recessive allele. So if you have blue eyes, that means you inherited a recessive allele. Cool, huh?
                                                                                                                                                       
        A lot of traits can be inherited. Eye color:
        Hair color:
       
        Skin tone:

       Not all traits are good. There are bad traits you can inherit. Cancer, for one. All kinds. Breast, lung, heart, so many.

        There's diabetes, too. And muscle disease.
        And many, many  more. But don't worry. You'll be fine, if you just take some necessary actions. Like catch cancer early, and such. I hope you learned something. It'd make me feel better. I know I learned a couple of things. If you wanna learn more, please go to my classmate's blogs. The links are down below. Have a good day, and until next time!

P.S. I'll redo my blog sometime.

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