Genetic

The term heredity refers to the passing of traits from parent (or ancestors) to the offspring. The process of heredity involves an offspring cell or organism, which acquires or becomes predisposed to certain characteristics of its parent cell or organism. It is through heredity that variations exhibited by individuals and accumulate and therefore cause some species to evolve.

The study of heredity in the field of biology is called genetics, which includes the subfield epigenetics. Genetics as a discipline of biology is focused not only on heredity, but also on genes and the variation in all kinds of living organisms. Genetics also deals with the molecular structure and function of genes, as well as the behavior of the genes in the context of a cell or an organism. Patterns of inheritance from parent to offspring and gene distribution are also of interest for geneticists.

Eye color in humans is a typical example of an inherited characteristic. A person can inherit his or her brown eyes from one of the parents. However, for a person to have blue eyes, both parents must possess the blue-eyed gene. Genes control these inherited traits; the complete set of genes found within an organism’s genome is called its genotype. On the other hand, the term phenotype refers to the complete set of observable traits of the structure, as well as the behave of a particular organism.

Many traits in living organisms arise from the interaction of its genotype with the environment, and this is the reason why many aspects of an organism’s phenotype is not directly inheritable. However, heritable traits are known to be passed from generation to generation through DNA, the molecule that is responsible for encoding genetic information.

This category contains scientific information on heredity, which refers to the passing of traits from parent (or ancestors) to the offspring.