My topic is genetics.  Don’t be scared off its not as complicated as it seems and is actually a very interesting topic.  There are so many avenues I can take on this subject but today I am writing about what makes us appear the way we do.  When I was watching the Jeremy Kyle show it was one of those episodes where they get the DNA results.  The father didn’t think the kid was his because it had blue eyes and all his family and the mother’s family had brown eyes.  What annoyed me about it was that Jeremy Kyle spent the whole time calling the girl a liar because the kid had blue eyes and when the DNA results came back saying the guy was the dad he never apologised once.  It made me think about how an offspring can have such a different trait to that of their parents and family so I thought I would show you how using a simple diagram and some rabbits.

Letters represent the gene (allele) and remember each parent has two and passes on one copy each to their offspring

Now what if the mother and the father both had 2 recessive white genes and each gave a copy to the offspring?  All the kits would be white.

Seems simple enough so far but what happens when you cross 2 black rabbits but which carry the recessive or less dominant gene, the white gene?  If the mother gives a black gene and a father gives a white gene the kit will be black and vice versa because the dominant gene will control what colour the rabbit will be.   Whenever the dominant gene is present you will see this as the dominant characteristic.  But if the parents each passed on their recessive white gene then you would get a white kit from black parents.

So this is how you can get say a white rabbit from two black ones or a child with blue eyes from parents with brown eyes.  It also how many genetic diseases can skip generations because it is recessive and requires both parents to be carrying that particular gene for it to show up.  It is obviously far more complicated than this but hopefully this will give you a better understanding for how it works and has been interesting and educational because there is much more to wildlife than meets the eye.