Throwing Natural Selection in the Blender Measuring only 56

Throwing Natural Selection in the Blender

Measuring only 5\'6\" tall, your biology professor is shorter than average for a human male. His short height isn\'t too surprising given his mother and father are 5\'7\" and 5\'5\" respectively. To make matters worse, your professor married a woman who is only 5\'2\". Not surprisingly, their two children are intermediate in height. Interestingly, however, the children have the same eye color as the father, which differs from that of the mother.

1) True or False: Both height and eye color in this family follow a pattern consistent with blending inheritance.

2) True or False: Human height is likely controlled by one gene with two alleles .

3) True or False: the eye color of the mother is likely determined by a recessive allele.

I wanted to verify my answers on these to see if I\'m on the right track. The answers I got are T on all of them. Thanks, in advance, for any help with these problems!

Solution

Please find the answers below:

Part 1: False (Both, human height and eye color are those characters in nature which depend upon nature of genes inherited by an individual. The eye color is an end-point feature of presence/absence of gene and the nature of gene. Further, the nutritional status of one also helps in determining the nature of height achieved by an individual.)

Part 2: True (Human height indeed is controlled by a single gene generally denoted by letter T. It has two alleles, one dominant and other recessive in nature. These genes follow Mendelian pattern of inheritance and hence, show dominant/recessive features.)

Part 3: True (Since the children bear the same eye color as the mother, it is very likely that the genes for eye color are inherited in autosomal manner and dominant in nature. This is because if the genes for eye color had to be inherited from the mother, they should have been recessive and homozygous in nature. This suggests that the gene for eye color carried by father is dominant in nature.)