Tic Flashcards
Chromosome
It’s a molecule that contains genetic material. We have 23 pairs of chromosomes. In each pair, one comes from the mother and the other one, from the father.
Locus
It’s the specific position of a gene on a chromosome. For instance, the gene may determine hair, skin or eye color.
Alleles
They are variants of the same gene. Returning to the example I gave before, eye color could have different possibilities, there may be a brown allele and a blue one. There are always two alleles per gene and the dominant allele is the one that will be expressed in the phenotype.
Homozygous
We call “homozygous” two alleles that are the same for a particular gene, for example two alleles that both code for brown eye color.
Heterozygous
The opposite of homozygous. An individual is heterozygous when the alleles for a gene are different, for example, when someone has one allele that codes for blond hair and the other for black hair.
Genotype
It’s the specific combination of alleles that an organism’s genetic makeup has. For instance, we could express a brown eye allele as a capital A and a blue eye allele as a lowercase a. In this case, the eye color genotype would be capital A and lowercase a, one next to the other.
Phenotype
It’s the physical or biochemical result of an individual’s genotype. It also involves environmental factors.
Changes in the frequency
They offer advantages in connection to the environment.
They become more common eventually since while individuals that have them reproduce, those that don’t have them become extinct with the passage of time.
Comprehension difficulties
This theory is often hard to understand because it involves slow changes over millions of years, something we don’t see in daily life. People also tend to misunderstand the idea that organisms best adapted to the environment are more likely to survive and reproduce.
Essentialism
It consists of the tendency of human beings to generalize living things based on their appearance, fixed ideas and instinct. For example, if we saw a pitbull, we would instinctively feel scared and want to run away since we have fixed ideas that they are dangerous. However, their behavior can change based on their training.
Finalism
The belief that a living being changes in purpose because they want to reach a goal. For instance, saying that birds grew wings so they could fly is finalism, since it suggests that wings appeared in order to fly, although it was because of a
gradual process of changes in the birds’ organism.
Evolution
It’s a term related to natural selection, variation among individuals and adaptability to the environment. It’s a process by which species change eventually through small genetic variations. These changes can help individuals survive and
reproduce in their environment, and over many generations, they can even lead to the development of new species.
