| A | B |
|---|
| heredity | passing of traits from parents to offspring |
| characteristics | physical features of an organism |
| traits | different forms of a characteristic of an organism |
| Gregor Mendel | discovered the principles of heredity while studying pea plants |
| Gregor Mendel | Father of Genetics |
| Self Pollination | pollen from the male fertilizes the ovule of the female from the same plant |
| Cross Pollination | when pollen from the male of one plant fertilizes the ovule of the female from a different plant. |
| Gene | segment of DNA that carry instructions of each characteristic |
| Allele | one of the alternative forms of a gene that specifies a particular trait. |
| Dominant | an allele that covers up another allele. Represented with capital letters. |
| Recessive | an allele that gets covered up and only shows when two are present in an organism; represented with lowercase |
| Homozygous | when an organism has identical alleles for a trait |
| Heterozygous | when an organism has different alleles for a trait |
| Punnett Square | a graphic tool used to predict results of a genetic cross |
| Phenotype | what the organism look like; appearance |
| Genotype | the genetic makeup of an organism; the two inherited alleles that an organism have |
| Homologous chromosome | chromosomes that have the same sequences of genes and the same structure |
| Meiosis | a process in cell dividion during which the number of chromosomes decreases to half the original number by two divisions of the nucleus |
| Sex chromosome | one of the pair of chromosomes that determine the sex of an individual. |
