ajmst37 at vms.cis.pitt.edu writes:
>hello,
>I have a question regarding genetics.
>I was watching the show "Medicine Ball" tonite and was wondering about
>something. Two dwarves had a child, and the father said that there was
>a one-in-four chance of the child being non-dwarf. But if the parents
>are dwarves, does that not mean that they are both homozygous recessive?
>wouldn't this mean that there is no chance of the child being a non-dwarf?
>I'm only a sophmore in college, so I might just be undereducated on the
>subject.
As I understand it, dwarfism is a *dominant* trait, so if both parents
were heterozygous the child would indeed have a 1/4 chance of being
non-dwarf (doing the Punnett square is left as an exercise for the
reader :^)
--
Jim Loats -- loats1 at fas.harvard.edu
Red meat isn't bad for you. Furry,
blue-green meat is bad for you.
