Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What are gender-specific traits passed on from parent to child?

For example, you get your Mitochondrial DNA only from your mother. A boy gets his Y Chromosome from his father. A boy gets his hair from his maternal grandfather. On and on and on. What are some other things that you specifically get from your mother or father?What are gender-specific traits passed on from parent to child?
Apart from the mitochondrial DNA, a child also gets the histone %26amp; other nucleoproteins also from the mother. Hypertrichosis (excessive hair around the pinna) is a totally Y-linked trait.What are gender-specific traits passed on from parent to child?
You get 23 chromosomes from your mother and 23 from your father. If either your mother or father has a copy of a gene that is dominant over the others you will inherit that trait. For example brown hair is dominant to blonde hair, most children with one blonde and one brown haired parent will have brown hair. Most traits are the result of many genes so its not always that simple. for instance a brown haired person may have blonde genes but these are not seen because their brown genes dominate, but they can pass blonde genes to their children.


Some genes are linked to sex chromosomes, i.e X and Y you can only get a X chromosome from your father because women dont have one, they have two X. So any traits on the y chromosome only will be passed from father to son,


Hair colour is determined by genes from father and mother its a mix.


Mitochondria are not passed from sperm to egg so only the mothers mitochondria are passed on.

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