DOMINANT AND RECESSIVE CHARACTERISTICS

Characteristics in the left-hand column dominate over those characteristics listed in the
right-hand column.

DOMINANT TRAITS

RECESSIVE TRAITS
grey, green, hazel, blue eyes

eye coloring

brown eyes

vision

farsightedness
normal vision
normal vision
normal vision

normal vision
nearsightedness
night blindness
color blindness*

hair

dark hair
non-red hair
curly hair
full head of hair
widow's peak

blonde, light, red hair

red hair
straight hair
baldness*
normal hairline

facial features

dimples
unattached earlobes
freckles
broad lips

no dimples
attached earlobes
no freckles
thin lips

appendages

extra digits
fused digits
short digits
fingers lack 1 joint
limb dwarfing
clubbed thumb
double-jointedness

normal
normal
normal
normal
normal
normal
normal

other

immunity to poison ivy

normal pigmented skin
normal blood clotting
normal hearing
normal hearing and speaking
normal- no PKU

susceptibility to poison ivy

albinism
hemophilia*
congenital deafness
deaf mutism
phenylketonuria (PKU)

* sex-linked characteristic

What's is an allele?

number
digits
digits
joints
proportion
thumb
joints

In the previous
during meiosis.

thehomologous

chapter, we talked about homologous chromosomes pair up

You may be confused about the word gene loci. A gene
is found on a chromosome. A chromosome contains many
genes, and they occupy specific places. Genes are said to
have the same locus if they occupy the same position on
chromosomes.

Since they occupy the same loci, the genes must be

referring to the same trait. For example, if a gene on
position 9 on
homologous A codes for eye color, then the gene on position 9
of homologous
B also codes for eye color. But one gene may code for
black eye while the other gene may code for blue eye. In this case, the two genes are
called alleles.
After reading this, you may be thinking what color will the eye be when two alleles are
different. In fact, only one of the alleles will be expressed in this case. The gene of the
unexpressed allele is not transcribed andtranslated.
The expressed gene is said to be dominant over the unexpressed gene, which is
described as recessive. We usually assume that there are only two distinctive traits, in
this case, the eye can either be black or blue, not any other color. If blue eyes is the
dominant trait, the person will have blue eyes when both or either one of his alleles for
eye color is blue, because the dominant allele will always be expressed instead of the
recessive alleles. The person can only have black eyes when both of the alleles codes for
black eye. You can thus calculate that the chance of this person having blue eye to black
eye is 2:1.

PHENOTYPE - This is the "outward, physical manifestation" of the organism. These are
the physical parts, the sum of the atoms, molecules, macromolecules, cells, structures,
metabolism, energy utilization, tissues, organs, reflexes and behaviors; anything that is
part of the observable structure, function or behavior of a living organism.
GENOTYPE - This is the "internally coded, inheritable information" carried by all living
organisms. This stored information is used as a "blueprint" or set of instructions for
building and maintaining a living creature. These instructions are found within almost all
cells (the "internal" part), they are written in a coded language (the genetic code), they
are copied at the time of cell division or reproduction and are passed from one
generation to the next ("inheritable"). These instructions are intimately involved with all
aspects of the life of a cell or an organism. They control everything from the formation of
protein macromolecules, to the regulation of metabolism and synthesis.

Each copy of the gene could be different. For example one copy may give you blue eyes
while another may give you brown.
So, what color are your eyes if you have both the brown and blue eye version of the eye
color gene? Brown. This is where the idea of dominant and recessive comes in.
Dominant means that one of the versions trumps the other. In our example here, brown
is dominant over blue so you end up with brown eyes.
The way people write out dominant and recessive traits is the dominant one gets a
capital letter and the recessive one a lower case letter. So for eye color, brown is B and
blue is b.
As I said above, people have two versions of each gene so you can be BB, Bb, or bb--BB
and Bb have brown eyes, bb, blue eyes. Versions of genes are often dominant because
the recessive version actually does nothing (click here to learn about other ways that
gene versions can be dominant).
In the eye color example above, the brown version of the gene makes a pigment that
turns your eye brown but the blue version does not make a blue pigment. Instead, it
makes no pigment and an eye without pigment is blue.
As you can probably guess, if the blue version of the eye color gene made a pigment,
then you'd get some mix of brown and blue. There are some cases like this for people.
One of the easiest to understand is hair.
There are two "hair type" genes, curly and straight. If you have two copies of the curly
version, you have curly hair and if you have two copies of straight hair version, you have
straight hair.
What kind of hair do you have if you have a copy of each? Wavy.
Each of these versions contributes something so that you get a mixture of the two. You
would write this out as CC is curly, SS is straight and CS is wavy.
In terms of what to talk about in your class, the hair type example I discussed above is a
pretty good one for incomplete dominance. Maybe ask the class what kind of hair they
have and what genes that means they have.

Dominant and Recessive Genes In Humans

As briefly referred to in the previous Genetics blog, for each of our genes we posess two
alleles. One of these alleles in inherited from our father and one from our mother. There
can be many different alleles for one gene and it can be completely up to chance, or
perhaps luck, what we inherit from our parents. When speaking in general terms about
dominant and recessive alleles, we tend to speak about genes as if for each of them
there are two different alleles. This is not always, or often, the case, but it sometimes is
and makes it much easier to explain this way.
For example, for a particular gene, say the ability to roll your tongue, there is a dominant
and a recessive gene. We can call the dominant allele R for being able to roll our tongue
and the recessive allele r for being unable to roll our tongue. Our parents could posess
any combination of these alleles: AA, aa or Aa. Then, it is completely down to chance
what we inherit from them.
One unexpected example is that the allele for dwarfism in humans is the dominant allele
and the allele for normal growth is recessive. This means that if we inherited both of the
different alleles for this gene we would show the dwarfism trait.
Below is a table of dominant and recessive traits shown in humans.
Dominant Trait in Humans Recessive Trait in Humans
A blood type
O blood type
Abundant body hair
Little body hair
Astigmatism
Normal vision
B blood type
O blood type
Baldness (in male)
Not bald
Broad lips
Thin lips
Broad nose
Narrow nose
Dwarfism
Normal growth
Hazel or green eyes
Blue or gray eyes
High blood pressure
Normal blood pressure
Large eyes
Small eyes
Migraine
Normal
Mongolian Fold
No fold in eyes

Nearsightedness
Rh factor (+)
Second toe longest
Short stature
Six fingers
Webbed fingers
Tone deafness
White hair streak

Normal vision
No factor (Rh -)
First or big toe longest
Tall stature
Five fingers normal
Normal fingers
Normal tone hearing
Normal hair coloring

When we are speaking about the inheritance of alleles and the genetic make-up of a
person with respect to one gene, we use one of two phrases. The first is homozygous,
meaning that the two alleles an individual posesses for one gene are the same i.e. AA or
aa. The second is heterozygous, meaning that the two alleles an individual posesses for
one gene are different i.e. Aa.