Where is hereditary information for traits located

That's more than , proteins! Like chromosomes, genes also come in pairs. Each of your parents has two copies of each of their genes, and each parent passes along just one copy to make up the genes you have. Genes that are passed on to you determine many of your traits, such as your hair color and skin color.

Maybe Emma's mother has one gene for brown hair and one for red hair, and she passed the red hair gene on to Emma. If her father has two genes for red hair, that could explain her red hair. Emma ended up with two genes for red hair, one from each of her parents.

You also can see genes at work if you think about all the many different breeds of dogs. They all have the genes that make them dogs instead of cats, fish, or people. But those same genes that make a dog a dog also make different dog traits. So some breeds are small and others are big. Some have long fur and others have short fur.

Dalmatians have genes for white fur and black spots, and toy poodles have genes that make them small with curly fur. You get the idea! Scientists are very busy studying genes.

They want to know which proteins each gene makes and what those proteins do. They also want to know what illnesses are caused by genes that don't work right. Genes that have been changed are called mutations. Figure 4: Walter Sutton.

Confirming the chromosome theory of inheritance. Morgan's lab connects eye color with inheritance of sex chromosomes. Figure 5: Although white-eyed males were bred in several cycles with female flies, only male offspring were passed the unique trait. The exception proves the rule. Figure 6: Walther Flemming. Key Questions What else can go wrong with chromosomes in meiosis? How do meiosis and mitosis differ in the transmission of genes?

What's the full story behind The Chromosome Theory? Key Concepts meiosis gametes chromosome gene. Topic rooms within Genetics Close. No topic rooms are there. Browse Visually. Other Topic Rooms Genetics. Student Voices. Creature Cast. Simply Science. Green Screen. Green Science. Bio 2. The Success Code. Why Science Matters. The Beyond. Plant ChemCast. Postcards from the Universe.

Brain Metrics. Mind Read. Eyes on Environment. Accumulating Glitches. Saltwater Science. Alleles of a gene have differences in the precise DNA sequence. A common example of this is eye color. We each have the same genes for eye color, but different allele combinations within those genes result in different eye colors. Traits are your observable characteristics. Many physical traits are genetic. Genetic differences give our bodies information that result in traits that differ from person to person.

We can also use genetic information to determine what inherited traits you may have. A difference from the expected sequence of a gene is called a variant or mutation.

Variants can be inherited from your parents, or they can happen spontaneously. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Mitochondria are structures within cells that convert the energy from food into a form that cells can use.

Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.

Each base is also attached to a sugar molecule and a phosphate molecule.