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Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents.
In the example on the right, both parents are heterozygous, with a genotype of Bb. The offspring can inherit a dominant allele from each parent, making them homozygous with a genotype of BB. The offspring can inherit a dominant allele from one parent and a recessive allele from the other parent, making them heterozygous with a genotype of Bb.
In addition to studying genetic diseases, the increased availability of genotyping methods has led to the field of pharmacogenetics: the study of how genotype can affect drug responses. [106] Individuals differ in their inherited tendency to develop cancer, and cancer is a genetic disease. The process of cancer development in the body is a ...
Genetic disorders are diseases that are caused by a single allele of a gene and are inherited in families. These include Huntington's disease , cystic fibrosis or Duchenne muscular dystrophy . Cystic fibrosis, for example, is caused by mutations in a single gene called CFTR and is inherited as a recessive trait.
The duplication and transmission of genetic material from one generation of cells to the next is the basis for molecular inheritance and the link between the classical and molecular pictures of genes. Organisms inherit the characteristics of their parents because the cells of the offspring contain copies of the genes in their parents' cells.
Human genetics is the study of inheritance as it occurs in human beings.Human genetics encompasses a variety of overlapping fields including: classical genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, biochemical genetics, genomics, population genetics, developmental genetics, clinical genetics, and genetic counseling.
A large body of molecular evidence supports a variety of mechanisms for large evolutionary changes, including: genome and gene duplication, which facilitates rapid evolution by providing substantial quantities of genetic material under weak or no selective constraints; horizontal gene transfer, the process of transferring genetic material to ...
Molecular genetics is a branch of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the structure and/or function of genes in an organism's genome using genetic screens.