Chapter 9
Heredity
The fruits, vegetables, and grains you eat are grown on farms
all over the world. Tomato seeds produce tomatoes, which in
turn produce more seeds to grow more tomatoes. Each new
crop of tomatoes carries genes for characteristics that were
inherited from the previous crop’s seeds. Some scientists are
trying to manipulate the information contained in the seeds to
produce different tomatoes. They have even tried inserting a
gene from a winter flounder (a type of fish) into a tomato so
that the tomato is cold-resistant! Why would this be
beneficial? This chapter will help you understand how traits
in plants and animals are inherited from one generation to
the next.
- What is “genetics” and who was Gregor
Mendel? - How are traits passed from one generation to
the next? - How can you predict the traits of the next
generation?