Essay about Genetic Crosses Features: Heredity and the Environment

Read the background information in the Question Column under “How can Punnett Squares help predict the traits of offspring?”

---If given traits and parents, be able to use a Punnett square or patterns to predict the probability of offspring for a given cross and express it as a fraction, percent, or ratio.---

Everyday our environmental factors continue to influence our individual personality development. It is important note that even though a group of people share an environment each person can have different experiences. Our environmental influences consist of any outside influences and conditions that affect of life and development. Some examples of environmental influences that shape who we become are authority figures, family members, communities, and our peers.

Used since the dawn of human domestication of agriculture and livestock, the basic premise of artificial selection involved early farmers selectively saving seeds to breed plants with certain characteristics (Evolution of Corn, n.d.). In more recent times, the aim has shifted from simply creating sturdier, tastier fruits and vegetables to being able to create as much food possible in order to meet human demands. Shaped by our modern global economy’s demand of efficiency, rising industrialization over the 20th century, and growing population, agricultural practices of genetic manipulation of crops has grown immensely over the last century. Taking a step beyond selectively saving choice seeds, the discovery of “hybrid vigor” by genetic engineers lead to farmers being able to interbreed

Farmers are using different technology for breeding. They used selective breeding to produce animals that exhibit desirable traits and they get more benefit from it. For example, using breeding techniques farmers makes cows which produce more milk with less lactose, and sheep which produce more wool. Farmers accept this new selective breeding technology because in the past, farmers would use growth hormones to promote such qualities. This became problematic when residue of the hormones remained in the meat, leaving it with a foul taste. When researchers began to clone transgenic animals, it became possible to develop certain traits in animals, which increased the quality of their yield. When a farmer would like to raise the standards of a herd, the breeding process is very slow and sometimes incomes can decrease (Wilmut 23). Many times when relying on sexual breeding alone to mass-produce these animals, there are chances of breeding out the desired traits (Freudenrich). Transgenic animal cloning will result in higher quality meats and dairies without the use of artificial hormones. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released in January 2008 concluded “edible products from normal, healthy clones or their progeny do not appear to pose increased food consumption risks relative to comparable products from conventional animals.” After 2008, US Food and Drug Administrative agree to use

Everyone stands to benefit from the developments made in the field of genetics as everyone is made of genes. Genetics is the study genes and how they influence human biology. Genes are the molecular unit of inheritance found in cells, these genes encode everything about human physiology ranging from eye/hair colour to height, possible mental/physical disorders and so on. The field of genetic testing is concerned with advancements in the study of the functions of individual genes and how they influence living things. Major advances have been made in the study of the genetic structure of humans and external influences to our internal makeup, such as our quality of life and their implications that may have on our physical and mental development.

Much of how an individual turns out to be is not only dependant on the genes in which their parents have passed down to them, but also due to the family structure in which they were raised by.

A very important piece of who we are as humans are genetics. Without genes, we wouldn’t have the same eye color, hair color, nose size, mouth size, freckles, dimples, and many other physical appearances. Not only would we not have the same physical appearances, our brains would be different. Your brain may have diseases that it does not have now. The study of genetics has come a very long way since it was first introduced. Nancy Wexler was an enormous contribute to the study of genetics through personal experiences, the Hereditary Disease Foundation, and her journey in Venezuela.

As scientists are experimenting with many methods of gene selection, the livestock industry are relying more on genetic selection. Genetic selection allow the farmers to produce the most fertile and efficient livestock. There are many impacts of genetic selection. Genetic selection allows the farmers to genetically modify the breed of the livestock to that mass production can occur to fulfill the need of consumers. With genetic selection the quantity and quality of meat and dairy production has been increased. I was not familiar with the technique of artificial insemination for reproduction biology until I took this class. I learned that artificial insemination is also a technique of genetic selection which allows the scientist to decide what kind of livestock they want. Also, to improve in fur quality of animal, the genetic selection is in used. With genetic selection, scientist can now improve the production rate of cattle. Genetic selection can also improve the physical characteristics of the livestock. To keep up with the world’s need in beef and dairy production genetic selections have a huge impact. Nowadays, the agriculture industries have been vastly improved because of the advancement in the genetic selections. Genetic selections also allow the farmer to modify animal more for either meat or dairy production. For example, Boer goat has been genetically modified to gain

The Punnett square is a useful tool for predicting the genotypes and phenotypes of offspring in a genetic cross involving Mendelian traits. Constructing a Punnett square is quite easy, as demonstrated by the Websites below.

Without diversity and variation among humans, the world would be quite monotonous. Although these disparities materialize on the exterior (e.g. hair color, eye color, widow’s peak, etc.) the authentic distinction lies deep within one’s genome. A genome consists of an organism’s DNA, thus providing the blueprint for growth and development (Moalem, 2014). Well-known physician, scientist, and author, Sharon Moalem expounded on the significance of genetics in one of his most prominent novels, Inheritance: How Genes Change Our Lives and Our Lives Change Our Genes. A myriad of biological concepts exist in this novel, all of which relate to genetics and the laws of inheritance. A few of these topics include: how genes are regulated/expressed, how a single change in DNA can alter the protein it codes for, and how ethics has an effect on genetics. These topics pertain to Big Idea 3: Living systems store, retrieve, transmit, and respond to information essential to life processes (CollegeBoard, 2015).

During my time as an undergraduate, I became exposed to a lot of ideas regarding human evolution. Through this, I became interested in human complexity and the diversity within human populations, in particular, the concept of human evolutionary genetics. It was then when I decided to focus my education on exploring how past and present environments may have influenced genes that may contribute to known differences in human phenotypes. Due to this, I

The world of Genetics is one that is both fascinating and interesting. When tackling how genetics plays a role in behavior, one must look within the scope of what genetics is before dealing with how it plays a significant role in one’s behavior. Simply put, genetics is the study of genes. It is a biological component within the entire study of biology itself. Scientists who study genetics and perform research do so with the intent to learn more about how genetics affects the overall attitudes, behaviors and dispositions of individuals. It could be said that genetics is somewhat of a psychological-biological science as researchers look at the underlying patterns within the genes that cause

In biology class, learning how to examine the dominant alleles from both parents to predetermine characteristics in children, such as eye color and facial features, helped me understand the relationship between genes and human traits. Last summer, I shadowed a professor of human genetics and molecular biology to observe his work with fruit flies. It was intriguing to witness research that diagnoses alcoholism and other medical concerns in humans through genetic testing and treatment. Seeing the real benefits of molecular biology for human conditions has influenced me to study anthropology and

Genes build the phenotype of humans as well as the underlying genotype. Competition between cultural genes leads to varied success of genetic determinism. It can therefore be said that learnt traits such as those espoused within a specific culture, can produce what may seem to be the genetic genotype of an individual. Genes are not always advantageous in the