Genetics Blog

Derek Sederman

Genetics are a very interesting topic. From the reebops project I learned about all of the

different types of genes and how they can influence a species appearance. The basic genes are

dominant and recessive. A dominant gene is represented by a capital letter and if it is paired

with a recessive gene the trait that it represents will be shown. A recessive gene is represented

by a lower-case letter and if it is paired with a dominant gene the dominant gene's trait will

shown. Also there are more complex types of genes. Those genes are co-dominant and

incomplete dominant genes. If two co-dominant genes are paired together both traits will show independently. For

example, in the reebops project there were two co-dominant genes for body color. They were

brown and green. So if a bug had a green gene and a brown gene, half of the bug would be brown

and the other half would be green. So the bug would look like the picture below.

The other complicated type of gene is an incomplete dominant gene. If two incomplete

dominant gens are paired together a combination of the two genes will appear. For example if

a flower had two incomplete dominant genes for color that where white and red, the two

colors would mix and the flower would be pink.