inhERITANCE...

Glossary:

Allele: An alternative form of a gene.

Dominant Allele: The allele that takes precedence over the recessive allele, and therefore shows itself in the population much more regularly.

Gamete: A haploid (one copy of DNA) egg or sperm cell, gametes unite during fertilization to form a diploid (two copies) gamete.

Gene: One of the many discrete units of hereditary information located on the chromosomes and consisting of DNA.

Genotype: The genetic makeup of an organism, usually discussed in terms of the two alleles whether they are homozygous or heterozygous.

Heterozygous: An organism that has two differing alleles for a gene, one dominant, one recessive.

Homozygous: An organism that has two identical alleles for a certain gene. Usually followed by the form of the alleles, for instance homozygous recessive, which would show the scarce trait.

Hybrid: An organism that is a cross between two differing varieties. Often times, this organism's genotype will be heterozygous.

Outcrossing: The act of maintaining genetic variability in mutant animal populations by means of breeding into the population unrelated animals and later recovering the recessive traits in the F2 generation.

Phenotype: The appearance of an organism. Having purple flowers is a phenotype while the plant's genotype may be heterozygous.

Recessive Allele: The allele that only appears as a trait when both copies are in its form.

Strain: A group of organisms within a species that can be characterized by some particular quality.

True-breeding: When parents reproduce, all of their offspring are the same variety. For example, in Mendel's experiments, all of his plants with purple flowers, when self pollinated, produced plants with purple flowers.