Basic Principles of Genetics: Probability of Inheritance, Essay Example

Genetics is a field within the sciences of utmost importance as it has become the leading field to polymerize and grant humans with the capability to accomplish things that were previously thought of as impossible. Incredible amounts of change making discoveries have been made in genetics throughout the centuries but without a doubt some of the greatest discoveries were done at its earliest stages and these would lay the foundation for all future work within this field. One of these major discoveries was Punnett squares and their usage within gene expression from one generation to the next. Successively, we would then discover ways in which not only some genes are expressed but how some of these genes have prevalence or even complete dominion of expression within a specific gender over the other. With this knowledge of Punnett squares in mind and the way they function we can then move on to decipher various different questions while also incorporating that fundamental concept of the fact that gene expression is sometimes only expressed in the XX female sequence or the XY male sequence.

Color blindness is an inherited pathology and various different instances have accounted for certain aspects of this disease that we have formulated and have concurred upon through years of research. Red/green color blindness is a pathology that is only observed in males as it is express through the XY combination rather than the XX combination of chromosomes. For this reason it would be likely that if a man had color blindness his daughter would not express that same disease. This however does not account for why his grandson would have that same color blindness. In order to explain this we must look at Punnett squares. Color blindness is recessive so if the man had a cc sequence and his daughter carried on that Cc sequence then it is most likely that the father of the grandson had a Cc sequence as well which resulted in the son having the cc sequence again and having color blindness. Moreover the girl could also have a cc sequence due to the fact that as aforementioned this disease does not express in females.

Works Cited

Neill, D. O. (2012). Basic Principles of Genetics: Probability of Inheritance. Retrieved from http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_2.htm