
Unless you have a twin, you probabaly look different from your siblings, parents, cousins, or friends.
You probably know that everyone looks different, but do you know how your look is decided?
Not by you or your parents, but your genetics. Genetics is how traits are passed down from parents to kids.

DNA carries your genetic information inside your cells. In other words, it provides the manual for your bodies functions.
In your cells, DNA is bunched up and twisted around a protein to form a chromosome. Chromosomes are used to hold all the genetic information in your body.

Chromosome
On each of the chromosomes there are lots of genes. There are different genes for different traits. A gene for eye color, hair color, skin tone, allergies, height, and even baldness.
However, everyone's genes do not have the same information. Some people have brown hair, blond hair, black hair, or red hair, and their genes share these differences. These different versions of genes are called alleles. So a gene tells us what traits and an allele gives the details.
With alleles and genes, there are also things called genotypes and phenotypes. While they may sound complicated they are actually simple.
A genotype is what the specific genetic coding is.
A phenotype is what is expressed, or physically seen.
The differences occur because genes have dominant and recessive alleles.
Let's use an example of eye color for the rest of the explanation. While in actuality eye color can end up being a lot more complicated, I'll provide the simple version.
Imagine there is a family where two brown eyed parents have one child with brown eyes and another child with blue eyes. How does this happen, where did the blue eyes come from?

Something to remember is that a chromosome has an x shape. The way the chromosome is structured, we have 2 alleles for each gene, one on each side of the x.
As I already mentioned genes have dominant and recessive alleles. A dominant allele will always decide the trait it codes for if it is present. It is loud and in the front of the recessive allele, which takes its spot in the background. In order for a recessive gene to actually show up on the outside, both of the present alleles have to be recessive so it is not out shined by a dominant gene.
When we are trying to figure out what a child might look like, we need a way to distinguish between dominant and recessive alleles. To do that we use lowercase and capital letters. For dominant traits we generally use capital letters because they are bolder, and for recessive traits we use lowercase letters.
SO for our example the brown eyes allele will be B and the blue eyes allele will be b.


b
B
When you are created you receive genetic information from your mom and your dad. In the process, you receive one random allele from your mom and one random allele from your dad. So your genes are determined by your parents genes.
To determine how likely you are to get certain traits, scientists constructed a Punnet Square. It is a chart that allows us to see all possible gene combinations.
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Unless you have a twin, you probabaly look different from your siblings, parents, cousins, or friends.
You probably know that everyone looks different, but do you know how your look is decided?
Not by you or your parents, but your genetics. Genetics is how traits are passed down from parents to kids.

DNA carries your genetic information inside your cells. In other words, it provides the manual for your bodies functions.
In your cells, DNA is bunched up and twisted around a protein to form a chromosome. Chromosomes are used to hold all the genetic information in your body.

Chromosome
On each of the chromosomes there are lots of genes. There are different genes for different traits. A gene for eye color, hair color, skin tone, allergies, height, and even baldness.
However, everyone's genes do not have the same information. Some people have brown hair, blond hair, black hair, or red hair, and their genes share these differences. These different versions of genes are called alleles. So a gene tells us what traits and an allele gives the details.
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