9781422276143

Have you ever observed that many of our characteristics, such as eye color, hair color, height, and so on resemble our parents’? The transmission of characteristics from parents to offspring is known as heredity. We can easily expect that the wheat grains we sow will definitely grow into wheat plants, just as rats are produced only by rats. Genetics Offspring is a product of sexual reproduction and therefore is

generally biparental in origin. Though we are not exact replicas of our parents, we still possess

variable degrees of resemblance with them.

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND

biparental: describes an organism with two parents. gamete: a mature haploid male or female germ cell that is able to unite with another of the opposite sex in sexual reproduction to form a zygote. meiosis: a type of cell division. monoparental: describes an organism that came from only one parent. replica: an exact copy of something.

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