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The study of human genetic variation has evolutionary significance and medical applications. It can help scientists reconstruct and understand patterns of past human migration. In medicine, study of human genetic variation may be important because some disease-causing alleles occur more often in certain population groups.
Genetic variation can be identified at many levels. Identifying genetic variation is possible from observations of phenotypic variation in either quantitative traits (traits that vary continuously and are coded for by many genes, e.g., leg length in dogs) or discrete traits (traits that fall into discrete categories and are coded for by one or a few genes, e.g., white, pink, or red petal color ...
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms. [1][2][3] It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar working in the 19th century in Brno, was the first to study genetics scientifically.
Genetic studies of traits and populations have been used to justify social inequalities associated with race, [7] despite the fact that patterns of human variation have been shown to be mostly clinal, [8] with human genetic code being approximately 99.6%-99.9% identical between individuals and without clear boundaries between groups. [9] [10]
Genetic code. A series of codons in part of a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule. Each codon consists of three nucleotides, usually corresponding to a single amino acid. The nucleotides are abbreviated with the letters A, U, G and C. This is mRNA, which uses U (uracil). DNA uses T (thymine) instead.
The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as the DNA within each of the 24 distinct chromosomes in the cell nucleus. A small DNA molecule is found within individual mitochondria. These are usually treated separately as the nuclear genome and the mitochondrial genome. [1]
Genetic variability is either the presence of, or the generation of, genetic differences. It is defined as "the formation of individuals differing in genotype, or the presence of genotypically different individuals, in contrast to environmentally induced differences which, as a rule, cause only temporary, nonheritable changes of the phenotype." [1]
Copy number variation is a type of structural variation: specifically, it is a type of duplication or deletion event that affects a considerable number of base pairs. [2] Approximately two-thirds of the entire human genome may be composed of repeats [3] and 4.8–9.5% of the human genome can be classified as copy number variations. [4]