Inheritance in Biology

Inheritance in biology is the transfer of characteristics from parents to offspring over a series of generations, which occurs due to the exchange of genetic information between cells. This is a key process that ensures the preservation and transmission of hereditary information over generations.

Inheritance in biology has several levels. Genotypic inheritance, also known as trait inheritance, involves the passing of genetic characteristics from parents to offspring. For example, if a parent has a certain eye color, then his child may also have this trait, since the genes responsible for the formation of eye color are passed on from parent to child.

Genotypic inheritance can be either dominant or recessive. Dominant inheritance means that the gene responsible for a particular trait is dominant, and the child inherits that trait from one of the parents. Recessive inheritance occurs when the gene for a trait is recessive, and in order for the trait to be expressed, a child must receive two copies of that gene from both parents.

In addition, there is phenotypic inheritance - this is the inheritance not of genes, but of a phenotype, i.e. external signs of the body. Phenotypic inheritance can be influenced by environmental factors, such as nutrition, lifestyle, and living conditions. For example, offspring can have the same phenotype as a parent even though they have different genotypes.

In general, inheritance in biology is an important process for the preservation and transmission of hereditary information from generation to generation. It plays a key role in the evolution and development of living organisms, as well as in medicine, genetics and agriculture.

Inheritance in biology is the transmission of properties from parents to offspring through sexual or asexual reproduction, the process by which traits are passed from parent to child. It occurs at the molecular, cellular and organismal levels.

When a person thinks about inheritance, they usually think of the transmission of traits involving genetic material. However, not all traits in the body are controlled by genes. For example, in many plants or insects, a significant part of heredity consists of mitochondrial genes, which are not inherited along with the genes of the parent cell.

More than 50% of the hereditary information of each organism is stored in mitochondria, without crossing them beyond the mitochondria during its transmission. The genetic material of the mitochondrion can also be compared to viruses, since it cannot reproduce independently of the mother cell's transmission, but typically contains much more genetic code to produce synthetic protein.

Unlike mitochondria, the nuclear genome is inherited. Genes are functionally indivisible units of hereditary information that implement one hereditary task. To become genes, the DNA in each cell of the body must be replicated twice. It is copied after it has split in two and formed two daughter cells - a new egg and a new sperm. The cells then join together through meiosis, the process of turning the haploid mother cells into two new, diploid cells for the future queen. Then the cells divide again. This is Generation A.

Further cell proliferation leads to the emergence of generations B, C, and so on. Each group consists of a different number of cells or organs, but they all contain the same chromosome set - the same number of genes that your grandmother had in her old age. Each generation divides in two, gaining twice the genome diversity of the previous generation, this happens again and again until new generations still do not divide in two. After all this division and recombination, you have a set of chromosomes of your particular species, certain sequential DNA molecules that you received from your ancestors. Geneticists consider these molecules to be a unit of heredity called an allele.

But what is all this for? For geneticists and biologists, any variations that may occur in the structure of DNA or chromosomes are important. These variations, whether of a molecular nature or of a general genetic nature, can be inherited along with the hereditary parts of the organism - alleles. When differences in DNA sequences between this one allele and its "alternative allele" (a pair of alleles that allows