12.4 Alternatives and applications  (Page 4/14)

Art connection

Figure 12.2

What ratio of offspring would result from a cross between a white-eyed male and a female that is heterozygous for red eye color?

Discoveries in fruit fly genetics can be applied to human genetics. When a female parent is homozygous for a recessive X-linked trait, she will pass the trait on to 100 percent of her offspring. Her male offspring are, therefore, destined to express the trait, as they will inherit their father's Y chromosome. In humans, the alleles for certain conditions (some forms of color blindness, hemophilia, and muscular dystrophy) are X-linked. Females who are heterozygous for these diseases are said to be carriers and may not exhibit any phenotypic effects. These females will pass the disease to half of their sons and will pass carrier status to half of their daughters; therefore, recessive X-linked traits appear more frequently in males than females.

In some groups of organisms with sex chromosomes, the gender with the non-homologous sex chromosomes is the female rather than the male. This is the case for all birds. In this case, sex-linked traits will be more likely to appear in the female, in which they are hemizygous.

Human sex-linked disorders

Sex-linkage studies provided the fundamentals for understanding X-linked recessive disorders in humans, which include red-green color blindness, and Types A and B hemophilia. Because human males need to inherit only one recessive mutant X allele to be affected, X-linked disorders are disproportionately observed in males. Females must inherit recessive X-linked alleles from both of their parents in order to express the trait. When they inherit one recessive X-linked mutant allele and one dominant X-linked wild-type allele, they are carriers of the trait and are typically unaffected. Carrier females can manifest mild forms of the trait due to the inactivation of the dominant allele located on one of the X chromosomes. However, female carriers can contribute the trait to their sons, resulting in the son exhibiting the trait, or they can contribute the recessive allele to their daughters, resulting in the daughters being carriers of the trait ( [link] ). Although some Y-linked recessive disorders exist, typically they are associated with infertility in males and are therefore not transmitted to subsequent generations.

Figure 12.2

12.4c pedigrees

Many human diseases are genetically inherited. A healthy person in a family in which some members suffer from a recessive genetic disorder may want to know if he or she has the disease-causing gene and what risk exists of passing the disorder on to his or her offspring. Of course, doing a test cross in humans is unethical and impractical. Instead, geneticists use pedigree analysis     to study the inheritance pattern of human genetic diseases ( [link] ).

Art connection

Figure 12.2

What are the genotypes of the individuals labeled 1, 2 and 3?

Section summary

Alleles do not always behave in dominant and recessive patterns. Incomplete dominance describes situations in which the heterozygote exhibits a phenotype that is intermediate between the homozygous phenotypes. Codominance describes the simultaneous expression of both of the alleles in the heterozygote. Although diploid organisms can only have two alleles for any given gene, it is common for more than two alleles of a gene to exist in a population. In humans, as in many animals and some plants, females have two X chromosomes and males have one X and one Y chromosome. Genes that are present on the X but not the Y chromosome are said to be X-linked, such that males only inherit one allele for the gene, and females inherit two.