My Personal Science Nerd

Hey Nerds,

I was talking to a family friend who owns a contracting business. It’s a family-owned company, and problems are always in abundance.

He was telling me about one particular instance in which half of the blueprints for a project that he had been commissioned to complete had gone missing. Of course, my sciency mind wandered (construction talk is frightfully boring) to genetics. Then, BOOM, epiphany.

Just for now, think about cells as a contracting company. The genetic code will act as a blueprint (I know that I contradict myself in a later post, but go with me here).

In this instance, a dominant allele will code for one copy of the blueprint. A recessive allele will code for a blank piece of blue paper.

So, lets look at the possibilities:

Homozygous dominant (XX) has two copies of the blueprint, and therefore has no problems building the house.

Heterozygous (Xx) has only one copy of the blueprint and one sheet of blank blue paper. The project takes longer, but the information is still at least there. And the house still gets built.

Homozygous recessive (xx) have no copy of the blueprints. This contracting company cannot build the house, so the lot that the house would have been built on remains in its default state: undeveloped.

Hopefully this will help some of you get a good grasp on the difference between dominant and recessive. When you get deeper into bio, you’ll find that it’s not actually that simple. But for all intensive purposes, this is all you need to know right now.

Best of Luck,
Grey

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