Question

How can recessive traits skip generations?

Answer 1

Hint: Traits are those specific characteristics that are inherited in a person from their parents and are known as one of the distinguishing features of organisms.

Complete answer:
1)The recessive traits are those traits that are suppressed in the presence of the dominant trait and the recessive trait can only appear when the dominant trait is not present. The recessive phenotype can be observed only in the case of a homozygous recessive genotype and cannot be observed in homozygous dominant genotype and heterozygous dominant genotype.

2)Even if the genotypes of the parent organisms are heterozygous, they will be a carrier for the recessive trait and will not show the phenotype of that recessive trait due to the presence of dominant allele but they can transfer their genes with recessive trait to their offsprings which can make the offspring heterozygous for that recessive gene and this offspring will hence show the phenotype for that recessive trait. In this way, a trait can skip a generation because the trait is recessive and can be covered up by the dominant trait in some generations.

Note: The recessive traits can be sexlinked or autosomal. The Sex-linked traits can be easily studied using a family tree but the autosomal traits cannot be easily studied using a family tree. The examples of the autosomal recessive trait are sickle cell anemia, and an example of sex-linked recessive disease is hemophilia.