Hello Mr.Moss

Hey Kelly, what are you doing this evening.

Gregor Mendel

Oh nothing, what about you, anything interesting going on.

KELLY

Actually, yeah! I've discovered a thing called heredity...

What in the world is heredity, I have never heard of that in my life.

Well, it is the process of parents passing on physical or mental characteristics genetically to their offspring (children).

That actually sounds very interesting, tell me more!

The process of heredity is when the parents carry the instructions for both the dominant trait and the recessive trait. The dominant trait is the powerful one that overpowers the recessive trait, this trait is the weak one that cant be seen through the dominant trait. But these instructions for an inherited trait can also be called genes. First of all, the genes affect the traits of offspring. An organism’s appearance that is visible on the outside is known as the phenotype. For example, you most likely have a phenotype of either curly hair or straight hair. Genes are also given to the offspring by one set from each parent. The offspring then has two versions of the same gene for every characteristic or feature that make them who they are (one from each parent). The different versions (often dominant and recessive) of a gene are known as alleles. Dominant alleles are capital letters and recessive are lower case letters, these alleles are often used to form a punnet square, and when both inherited alleles are together, they form an organisms genotype.

What is a punnet square?