Chapter 1 ALL IN THE GENES have your mother’s green eyes Your chin comes from your father You You You must get your musical ability from your parents People have always noticed traits or characteristics that are similar between parents and their kids Some of these traits such as eye color and a dimpled chin can be easily seen Other traits like blood type and personality cannot be seen 4
Scientists who study genetics are called geneticists Parents pass down traits to their offspring or young The offspring have these inherited traits for the rest of their lives Genetics is the branch of science that studies how traits are passed along To understand how genetics works look inside a cell All living things are made of tiny cells such as skin cells nerve cells and blood cells 5
Golgi complex cytoplasm mitochondria nucleolus nucleus lysosome endoplasmic reticulum cell membrane Each cell has a nucleus which is the cell’s control center Every nucleus carries all the information a living thing needs to grow live and reproduce This information is tightly packaged in a coil which looks like a wound up rope or hose The coil is made of long threadlike structures called chromosomes 6
Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA forms the chromosomes DNA is at the very heart of genetics A DNA molecule is incredibly complex It looks like a twisted ladder Four bases or basic building blocks make up the rungs of the ladder Bases always come in pairs Each rung in the ladder is made of two out of the four bases base 1 base 3 base 2 base 4 The twisted ladder shape of DNA is called a double helix 7
