1. GENETICS

2. Have you ever wondered… How no two people have the same fingerprints? How two brown cows can have a white calf? Why you have green eyes when both parents have blue? Why you can roll your tongue and your friend can’t? These questions can all be answered through genetics, the study of heredity.

3. Genetics A general understanding of how heredity works has existed for a very long time. Over 5000 years ago, Native Americans used their understanding to develop corn through a process of selective breeding. (  we’ll get back to this )

4. Father of Genetics The foundation for genetics, as we know it today, was laid by a monk / priest named Gregor Mendel. 1851 – Mendel began his studies on genetics through experiments with pea plants. He observed that the pea plants had traits that were often similar to their parents. However, sometimes the pea plants had different traits than their parents. WHYYY?!

5. Mendel’s Experiment Why did the shortness trait disappear? Why did it reappear in the next generation?

6. The Discovery of Genes and Alleles Mendel reasoned that individual “factors” must control the inheritance of traits. The “factors” exist in pairs: the female contributes one and the male contributes one. We now refer to the “factors” that control traits as genes. The different forms of a gene are called alleles.

7. Dominant vs. Recessive Mendel discovered that one of the alleles can sometimes mask, or hide, the other allele just like tallness masked shortness in the peas. A dominant allele is one whose trait always shows up in the organism when the allele is present. Represented with a capital letter Ex: (T) tall A recessive allele is masked, or covered up, whenever the dominant allele is present. Represented with a lowercase letter ex: (t) short

8. Dominant vs. Recessive T T t T T t T T T t T T t t T Tt t