Hi!

       Blue eyes, brown hair... Got those from mom... Oh hey guys sorry just looking at family pictures. 

       You may be wondering what family pictures have to do with science. Well we are going to talk about genetics, genetics is the science of genes and heredity. Heredity is why we look like our parents, because we inherit traits from our parents. The passing down of traits from our parents to us is the basis of heredity. Genes encode the traits that we inherit. 

       Have you ever wondered why some children have different eye colors than their parent? Well some genes are recessive and some are dominant. Dominant genes take over recessive, so if a person has genes for brown eyes and blue eyes (the brown eye gene is dominant) then they will have brown eyes. 

        There are some traits that are always copied and passed down. The traits that are always passed down are called genotypes. A physical trait that is passed down (like eye, hair color) is called a phenotype. You now know that there is much more to genetics and heredity than just getting half of your moms genes and half of your dads. The environment that you grow up in also has a lot to do with how you turn out. 

       I have some more super smart vocabulary! So, an allele is one of a pair of genes that contains important traits. Homozygous is having 2 forms of the same gene, one inherited from each parent. Heterozygous is the exact opposite, its having 2 different forms of a gene, one inherited from each parent. 

       Now we are going to talk about how scientists show how we inherit traits. The punnett square is a diagram that is used to predict an outcome of a cross/breeding. A scientist named Gregor Mendel made the punett square. He was the first to discover recessive and dominant genes, he experimented with peas! Gregor was is considered the father of genetics since he was the first one to really experiment with it. 

Hope you learned tons of cool vocab and facts about genetics!
Click here for more about genetics
Click here for a game on genetics! 
Have a Great Day!!! :D