Heredity and the Different Types of Inheritance Essay

All living beings are able to pass on certain features and characteristics to their descendants. It is the ability due to which scholars explain the similarity between the child and his parents called human heredity, the discovery of which was primarily attributed to Gregor Mendel (Muehlenbein 48).

At the same time, child’s qualities, peculiar to each of the parents, are manifested differently. For example, the child may outwardly resemble the father, but his behavior would be transferred from his mother. It occurs because there are two types of genes – dominant and recessive (Emery and Emery 43). The first of them would appear in the course of a child’s development by inhibiting the action of the latter. Heredity reflects on man’s mental and physical development. However, one cannot judge the potential of the child only according to his parents. It is possible that the child would inherit the dominant qualities of one of the remote ancestors. In this sense, it goes without saying that heredity and inheritance topic applies to real life playing an important role as for genetics as well as for every man. One of the interesting studies of inheritance is drawing a family tree. It allows following the dominant features in related entities within a few generations in each particular family. From a practical point of view, such study is very significant to identify the different transmitted diseases as a result of the influence of heredity on human. Therefore, it is achievable to develop methods for diagnosis and prevention of possible pathology in some cases. Let us take the following example. There is a married couple. The woman has a recessive gene responsible for predisposition to diseases of the respiratory system. If this gene interacts with a man with a dominant gene, both features would be presented in the genetic code of their child, but the gene of the respiratory system diseases would be suppressed by the dominant gene of a man. As a result, the disease would not manifest itself in a child with a high probability.