(a) Genes are the units of heredity which transfer characteristic from parents to their offspring’s during reproduction. Genes are located on the chromosomes.
(b) The gene which decides the appearance of an organism even in the presence of an alternative gene is known as dominant gene. The gene which can decide the appearance of an organism only in the presence of another identical gene is called a recessive gene. The dominant gene is represented by a capital letter and the corresponding recessive gene is represented by the corresponding small letter. For example, in pea plants, the dominant gene for tallness is T and the recessive gene for dwarfness is t.
(c) There is a pair of genes for each characteristic of an organism, one is dominant gene and the other is recessive gene. Each parent passes only one of the two genes of the pair for each characteristic to its progeny through gametes. Thus, the male gamete and the female gamete carry one gene for each characteristic from the gene pairs of the parents. When a male gamete fuses with a female gamete during fertilisation they make a new cell called zygote which grows and develops to form a new organism having characteristics from both the parents which it has inherited through genes.
