Why are genes inherited from parents the strongest?
- Thread starter pluto2
- Start date
You get half of each of your parent's genes. So, you only get a quarter of any particular grandparent's genes, and one eighth of your great grandparent's.
Do you know where it's stated so I could have a deeper look at it? Is it Mendel's law?
Any basic genetics textbook. One of the world’s most popular university undergraduate genetics textbooks is:
Introduction to Genetic Analysis
Griffiths, Anthony J.F.; Miller, Jeffrey H.; Suzuki, David T.; Lewontin, Richard C.; Gelbart, William M.
New York: W. H. Freeman & Co.; c1999
Yes and no.
Yes in the sense that Mendel’s Laws describe how genes are passed from one generation to the next and what traits the offspring will present as a result of the genes they inherited.
No in the sense that Mendel’s Laws, whilst they have a pivotal importance in our understanding of basic genetics and inheritance of traits, do not accurately represent traits in complex organisms. Mendel’s Laws describe simple monogenic dominant-recessive allelic relationships that are not influenced by epigenetic factors. Of the ~25000 human gene pairs that a human carries (one allele from each parent), there are very few allele pairs that produce traits that are purely Mendelian in nature. Nearly every trait a human exhibits is a complex one that is influenced by many genes and many epigenetic factors.