Biology Made Fun · Go Further
Unit 7: Inheritance
The companion to Unit 7 in Biology Made Fun — the code printed on page 71, the unit's Big Picture opener. Guiding question: Why do offspring look like their parents — but never exactly?
Animation — InheritanceThe concept animation for this unit will be embedded here.
Key ideas from the lesson
- Heredity is the passing of traits from parents to offspring. An allele is a version of a gene inherited from a parent.
- A dominant trait masks the expression of another trait when present; a recessive trait is hidden by a dominant one.
- Your genotype is your genetic makeup — AA, Aa or aa. Your phenotype is the physical expression of the trait: what actually shows.
- Homozygous means two identical alleles (AA or aa); heterozygous means two different ones (Aa).
- A Punnett square predicts the outcome of genetic crosses: each parent passes ONE allele to each offspring, so you write the parents' alleles on the top and side of the square and fill each box by combining them.
Why this helps
Unit 7's question — why do offspring look like their parents, but never exactly? — is answered by a grid. Watching a Punnett square fill in shows exactly where the “like them” comes from, and where the “never exactly” sneaks in.
Try this
Set up the unit's own cross: two parents who each carry R (round, dominant) and r (wrinkled, recessive). Fill the four boxes, then list the genotypes you made and the phenotype each one shows. Check against the unit's See It page.
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