Preserve Your Health

In search of hereditary functions of genes, through his experiments on garden peas and fruit flies, Gregory Mendel hypothesized that some genes are dominant and others recessive. Like chromosomes, the genes also occur in pairs. Each of the pairs is donated by one of the parents. An offspring thus may be found to derive a gene pair in one of the following forms, a dominant gene from one of the parents and recessive gene from the other, dominant genes from both the parents and recessive genes from both the parents.

In simple meaning a dominant gene must exhibit his dominance over the recessive ones. For example if one parent furnishes a gene for brown eyes( Known to be dominant) and the other provides a gene for blue (a recessive gene), the offspring will have brown eyes (characteristic of the dominant gene).

However the fact that a particular trait is recessive in one generation in no way rules out its appearance in the future. For example in the above example of mutation between brown and blue genes resulting into brown eyes, a recessive blue gene lies in wait. If that offspring is copulated with someone with another gene for blue eyes (even if he or she may not possess blue eyes) their offspring, the third generation, might have blue eyes.
The role of genes specified as above, may thus provide us a solid support (besides the chance pairing of 23 chromosomes and 3,000genes from the egg and sperm cells) for explaining the variations and dissimilarities in height, weight, intelligence, blood type, eye color, and the color and texture of the skin and hair and similar other important characteristics found in the parents and their offspring’s as well as within the offspring of the same parents.