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Mendel consciously chose pairs of genetic traits, represented by two alleles for his inheritance experiments. In nature, such genes often exist in several different forms and are therefore said to have multiple alleles. An individual usually has only two copies of each gene, but many different alleles are often found within a population.
For example, Mendel focused on traits whose genes have only two alleles, such as "A" and "a". However, many genes have more than two alleles. He also focused on traits determined by a single gene. But some traits, such as height, depend on many genes rather than just one. Traits dependent on multiple genes are called polygenic traits.
Multiple alleles refers to the situation when there are more than 2 common alleles of a particular gene. Blood groups in humans is a classic example. The ABO blood group proteins are important in determining blood type in humans, and this is determined by different alleles of the one locus. [11]
Autosomal dominant A 50/50 chance of inheritance. Sickle-cell disease is inherited in the autosomal recessive pattern. When both parents have sickle-cell trait (carrier), a child has a 25% chance of sickle-cell disease (red icon), 25% do not carry any sickle-cell alleles (blue icon), and 50% have the heterozygous (carrier) condition. [1]
Eye color is an inherited trait influenced by more than one gene, including OCA2 and HERC2. The interaction of multiple genes—and the variation in these genes ("alleles") between individuals—help to determine a person's eye color phenotype.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 27 February 2025. Science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms This article is about the general scientific term. For the scientific journal, see Genetics (journal). For a more accessible and less technical introduction to this topic, see Introduction to genetics. For the Meghan Trainor ...
Balancing selection refers to a number of selective processes by which multiple alleles (different versions of a gene) are actively maintained in the gene pool of a population at frequencies larger than expected from genetic drift alone. Balancing selection is rare compared to purifying selection. [1]
Pickrell and Przeworski also investigated 42 traits determined by multiple alleles rather than just one, such as the timing of puberty. They found that later puberty and older age of first birth were correlated with higher life expectancy. [8] Larger sample sizes allow for the study of rarer mutations.