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Explanation: Some animals have red hair as a dominant trait. By specifying "in humans" The explanation would avoid possible confusions. (I'd change it but I don't know how to change the text below images.)-- Teuf0rt ( talk) 15:19, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
My suggestion here is that gene or genetics attempt to do the same as we have done for evolution and has been done for special relativity and general relativity. That is, an Introduction to Genetics article be created in Wikipedia to allow easier access to the material. I would be glad to help. I propose to use the Simple Wikipedia article as a basis, and then we can edit it to be more suitable, just as was done in the case of Introduction to evolution.-- Filll 23:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Isn't this supposed to be in wikibooks? Yeom0609 23:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
In this specific case, I would say Madeleine is probably right, so perhaps the "For a non-technical introduction to the topic, please see Introduction to genetics" should be removed from the top of genetics article, until this one is in a more presentable form? (One could move the link to the "see also" section.) -- Merzul 19:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
My apologies, to some degree I was responding to this general perception stated above: "honestly, i think the place for these is the simple english wikipedia. Otherwise, what would that be for, anyway?" in reference to Introduction articles in general. I did not realize the genetics article was a solo act. I do recall the original condition and in fact, it has much improved. If that is a result of your edits then you are to be congratulated. I recommend de-linking the intro to genetics until someone is willing to contribute to its improvements. That does not of course change my perception that the topic could benefit from an Introduction entry, but as you have stated in your own fashion "Put up or shut up" ... due to time constraints I will have to do the latter. Perhaps, if it is not deleted entirely we can chip away at it over the summer when school is over. There is a textbook tone to the evolution intro; perhaps a consequence of my teacher training; but I would like to think it has merit. Although, genetics might be considerably harder to simplify than evolution. Again, my apologies if I came across too critical, the genetics article is indeed vastly improved. Best of luck with your edits. -- Random Replicator 03:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Months after participating in the beginning of this discussion, I came back to see the evolution, and I think the debate has been positive. I should point out a few conclusions:
Waldir 18:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Encyclopedia Britannica itself, our gold standard in encyclopediae, has 5 or 6 different levels of articles. I have no problem with extended teaching materials in Wikiversity and wikibooks. However, I think there is a place for shorter more accessible articles here of an introductory nature.
We do not have 5 or 6 levels like EB, but only 3 (Simple Wikipedia, introductory articles and main articles). This is a major goal of Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible and has resulted in several other introductory articles: Category:Introductions has the list.
The more accessible we make our material, the better, as far as I am concerned. The more ways we present of doing this, the better.-- Filll 19:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
simple:Genetics - It's a good start - perhaps even better than this one - but Punnet squares refuse to appear overnight without my input. *sigh* Adam Cuerden talk 18:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I've started a discussion on the Genetics Wikiproject talk: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Genetics#Introduction_to_Genetics considering whether this article should exist (compared to the current Genetics article, which is FA), and asking if anyone has a clear idea on what to do with it. If you're watching this page and are interested in the article, please chime in! Thanks! Madeleine ✉ ✍ 06:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
You know, I think the entry is getting more complicated and difficult to understand as it goes on. We're repeating the problems of Genetics.
Here's the old version:
Here's the new version:
Just read the two versions for a second. Which is easier to read?
You're introducing the term "inheritance" to define "genetics." It's sort of circular, like saying, "Morphine causes sleep because it contains a dormitive principle." The next thing you discuss is the exception -- "some, but not all".
The second sentence is too long. I once wrote a sentence that long for an article, and my editor made me stand there while he read it aloud.
If you're explaining difficult ideas, one way to make it simpler is to use simpler sentences.
One of the problems is that we're under the gun to prove that we can improve the article before it's deleted. I think we should remove the deletion tag to begin with, because from the discussion it looks as if there's no consensus, and it won't be deleted.
Let's stop for a second and think it out. What are the important ideas that we want to convey in this article? What's the simplest way we can convey them?
There's an expression -- "Sometimes you're rowing so hard you don't have time to look at your compass." Let's look at the compass. Where are we going with this?
I hope you don't take this wrong, Tim, because I appreciate your work, but it's actually very difficult to write a simple article. I've been there.
William Butler Yeats said, "Easy reading is hard writing." And Ezra Pound said, "Easy writing is damn hard reading." Nbauman ( talk) 16:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Please post reviews below, I'm particularly interested in pieces of the article that are hard to understand or assume too much prior knowledge. Thanks to everybody who can contribute. Tim Vickers ( talk) 18:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to add another RfC as a regular RfC. Nbauman ( talk) 21:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
I find a bit odd to find a glossary section right after the foreword. Isn't this what wikilinks are for? I think it breaks down the pace of the whole thing. GoEThe ( talk) 23:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
You might want to check out the template Template:Genetics glossary, which is used in the current Gene article. -- Madeleine ✉ ✍ 02:45, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
BTW, for reference, here's the definition of DNA in Introduction_to_genetics#Glossary:
and here's the definition from Template:Genetics_glossary:
Which one is easier for an ordinary reader to understand?
In order to understand the Genetics definition, you have to know what a polymer is, what base pairs are, and what nucleotides are. If somebody doesn't know what DNA is, I doubt that they would know what a polymer is.
If you didn't know what DNA was, this definition tells you, "DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid." That's no help. It doesn't even give the reason DNA is so important, which is that it carries genetic information. Nbauman ( talk)
Hi all
excellent work btw !
just a couple of major points i would like ppls opinions on.
At the moment the line "The way genetics and environment interact to produce a trait can be complicated:"
this seems to imply that the environment has an effect on the production of the trait whereas i believe a more accurate line would be
"The way genetics and environment interact to affect a trait can be complicated:"
it is also my belief that this still does not accurately show that a trait is in fact an inherited DNA function and NOT affected by environment, simply that the trait can be overridden by environment. It does not matter if your family has a history of heart disease and you live in a high fat environment, put that same person in a low fat environment and the risk of heart attack is suddenly greatly decreased - however the trait for heart attack due to arythmia (for example) is still present. This environment does not remove the trait, it simply masks it.
in the section Genes and Inheritance "You can think of this process like mixing two hands of cards, shuffling them, and then dealing them out again." - perhaps this could be changed to express more fully the function (or simply removed) ?
"You can think of this process like a pack of cards. The mother has hearts and clubs, the father spades and diamonds. When we reproduce the father gives one set and the mother one set. This means that the child could have Hearts and spades, hearts and diamonds, clubs and spades or clubs and diamonds." this also gives an introduction into basic phenotype classing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.22.111.33 ( talk) 14:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
If the gene coding for brown eyes is dominant over the one coding for green eyes how can there be people with greenish-brown eyes?
2009-07-24 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.247.167.70 ( talk) 11:52, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
My mother has green eyes and my father has brown eyes. Oddly enough, neither me or my brother have either green or brown eyes - my brother's eyes are blue and mine are a hazel color, also known as greenish-brown. My grandmother on my mother's side had blue eyes, so my mother carries the blue gene, which explains my brother's blue eyes. So, one of my parents must have a relative with hazel eyes like mine, thus making them carry the gene. Does that help? 66.222.226.225 ( talk) 22:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
As I have learned it the genes coding for brown and green eyes are dominant while the genes for blue and gray eyes are recessive. If you have two dominant genes coding for eye colour or two recessive ones you will have a colour in-between. Your mother have one gene coding for green eyes and one gene for blue ones resulting in her having green ones. Similarly, your father has one gene coding for brown ones and one for grey ones resulting in brown eyes. You have greenish-brown eyes because you happened to inherit both of your parent’s dominant genes for eye colour. In the same way your brother happened to inherit both of his parent’s recessive genes resulting in an eye colour in-between. There are also people with violet eyes but I don’t know what this trait is due to.
2010-05-14 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
As I understand it the pair of genes I described determines main eye colour (brown, greenish-brown/hazel, green, blue, gray-blue/blue-gray, gray). There are additional genes which modifies the hue within those main eye colours. Hair colour is due to the combined effect of many genes. However, reddish streaks are due to a recessive gene which also affect skin colour. Skin colour is not completely hereditary as human skin typically gets darker from exposure to ultraviolet light. But the skin colour without suntan and the ability to achieve it is hereditary. Addiction to tobacco may also make human skin a little more yellowish but I am not sure about that.
2010-05-15 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
Another possibility is to simply move or copy this article to Wikiversity. Wikiversity is the place to gain technical knowledge about a variety of subjects. One advantage of placing this article at Wikiversity instead of here, is that people who would like to increase their level of expertise on genetics would be able to actually discuss the subject with Wikiversity's mentors. I'm guessing that some people who would go here for a less technical overview of genetics might also need the support network provided by WV. -- AFriedman ( talk) 17:16, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi! I like your idea and I've done just that. I'm not used to citing references the way they're cited in the article, and had a problem with fixing links in references 15 and 21 in Wikiversity. Could you please help me with that? -- AFriedman ( talk) 22:26, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I've noticed that on the lead section, the words "fail to" cross onto the top left corner of the glossary box. It looks a bit awkward, honestly. Does anyone know a way to get the words off of the glossary box? (I'm still learning how Wikipedia works, so any advice and help would be much appreciated.) The Unraveling Spool of Thread ( talk) 20:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Can someone please change the following sentence:
The information within a particular gene is not always exactly the same between one organism and another, so different copies of a gene do not always give exactly the same instructions
I am completely ignorant on the topic of genes so I didn't edit it, but I am finding it completely ambiguous and out of place.
Between two organisms? as in two people? two parts of the body? What's a particular gene?
Thanks, tropicana 383
For the most part, this article does an excellent job describing the basics of genetics. However, this paragraph (currently the third paragraph in the introduction) is factually incorrect:
Some traits are inherited through our genes, so tall and thin people tend to have tall and thin children; such traits which result due to inheritance alone are called genotypes. Other traits come from interactions between our genes and the environment, so a child might inherit the tendency to be tall, but if they are poorly nourished, they will still be short; such traits which are manifested due to the combined action of inherited genes and environmental circumstances are called phenotypes.
This paragraph describes genotype as "traits inherited through genes" (paraphrased) and phenotype as "traits due to the interaction of genes and environment." (again paraphrased.) This is flat-out incorrect; see the relevant pages for genotype and phenotype for the correct definitions.
That the environment and genes interact to produce phenotype is described in paragraph two; the actual terms "genotype" and "phenotype" are introduced and described in the subsequent section "Genes and inheritance." Thus, the relevant topics are well-covered elsewhere, so I will delete this paragraph. Feel free to discuss this change here.
Luceth ( talk) 02:08, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
I have occasionally heard that bacteria have hundreds of genes and vertebrates tens of thousands. Should the article address the question of how genes may be counted? Jim.henderson ( talk) 13:55, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Anthropology and Human Biology Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human genetics and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library system at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to other academic libraries in the same large metropolitan area) and have been researching these issues sporadically since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human genetics to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk, how I edit) 19:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
(Disclaimer: this is my first participation in any talk page; and w/r G.E. I am a only lay person who's done a little reading.) "Other genes that can be put into crops include a natural insecticide from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis." This says that the relevant gene is an insecticide that comes from a bacteria. (Minor: bacteria -> bacterium.) What I believe it should say is that a gene from a bacterium produces or creates or makes (a protein that is) an insecticide. In sum, I suggest something like: Another gene being put into some crops comes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis; the gene makes a protein that is an insecticide. Brec ( talk) 14:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Hi. The article chromosome sends readers here for an introduction to the topic (of chromosomes), but this article actually makes no mention of that topic. Problemo! Howunusual ( talk) 02:37, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Introduction to genetics/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Personally I think this page is very good on the introduction - I need something that I can read and understand that doesn't seem littered with the medical terms - I'm a student and so a lot of this information is new to me and also very confusing, especially with the medical terms used in other pages and on other sites. Thanks for the easy to read intro and keep up the good work! |
Last edited at 13:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 19:02, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Since 2015, there are many advances in the understanding of DNA and genetics that are not yet reflected here or in the main article.
A short, non-comprehensive list:
I will endeavor to make simple explanatory expansions within the freamwork of the existing article. I wanted to see if there are suggestions or comments before doing so.
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Just to the right of that beautiful rotating gif appears the phrase "In the case of a daughter with alleles for both red and brown hair..." I honestly don't know exactly what one has to do with the other. My possibly incorrect understanding is that an allele is an example of a nucleotide and the nucleotides are the bars that hold the two backbones together. So my question is: Where in this gif would I find the daughter's B allele, her b allele, and her Bb genotype? I gather from the first few comments on this talk page that this is an introductory article, so perhaps my question is fair game.
Page Notes ( talk) 11:43, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Introduction to DNA and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 3#Introduction to DNA until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 17:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Components of the double-helix are not described clearly in Wikipedia, especially in the technical articles. In a desperate search for a clear identification of the nucleotides, I found in the Genes and inheritance section here: nucleotides are identified as "plate-like units in the center". Can we please use a spiral staircase analogy for the double-helix and say the nucleotides are the steps in the spiral staircase? Another point of confusion in this section is in the Punnett square. Capital "B" is used for the brown allele, so can we please use lower case "r" for the red allele, instead of "b"? Rtdrury ( talk) 21:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
The definitions in the respective Wikipedia pages do not appear to differ between genotype and genome. This is also evident in most definitions I found. Is there a difference? Clarification would help - and perhaps a mention in the Introduction to Genetics article ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_genetics).
“The genotype of an organism is its complete set of genetic material”(
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotype). There is a somewhat different definition of genotype from the NHGRI at NIH (
https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/genotype).
“a genome is all the genetic information of an organism” (
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome).
It would also be informative to discuss the genetic information of the entire population of an organism. Does it have a name? How many more genes are present in the population of an organism than in a single individual? Presumably unknown but the current academic thoughts (or lack of) would be interesting.
QuietJohn (
talk)
16:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
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Explanation: Some animals have red hair as a dominant trait. By specifying "in humans" The explanation would avoid possible confusions. (I'd change it but I don't know how to change the text below images.)-- Teuf0rt ( talk) 15:19, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
My suggestion here is that gene or genetics attempt to do the same as we have done for evolution and has been done for special relativity and general relativity. That is, an Introduction to Genetics article be created in Wikipedia to allow easier access to the material. I would be glad to help. I propose to use the Simple Wikipedia article as a basis, and then we can edit it to be more suitable, just as was done in the case of Introduction to evolution.-- Filll 23:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Isn't this supposed to be in wikibooks? Yeom0609 23:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
In this specific case, I would say Madeleine is probably right, so perhaps the "For a non-technical introduction to the topic, please see Introduction to genetics" should be removed from the top of genetics article, until this one is in a more presentable form? (One could move the link to the "see also" section.) -- Merzul 19:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
My apologies, to some degree I was responding to this general perception stated above: "honestly, i think the place for these is the simple english wikipedia. Otherwise, what would that be for, anyway?" in reference to Introduction articles in general. I did not realize the genetics article was a solo act. I do recall the original condition and in fact, it has much improved. If that is a result of your edits then you are to be congratulated. I recommend de-linking the intro to genetics until someone is willing to contribute to its improvements. That does not of course change my perception that the topic could benefit from an Introduction entry, but as you have stated in your own fashion "Put up or shut up" ... due to time constraints I will have to do the latter. Perhaps, if it is not deleted entirely we can chip away at it over the summer when school is over. There is a textbook tone to the evolution intro; perhaps a consequence of my teacher training; but I would like to think it has merit. Although, genetics might be considerably harder to simplify than evolution. Again, my apologies if I came across too critical, the genetics article is indeed vastly improved. Best of luck with your edits. -- Random Replicator 03:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Months after participating in the beginning of this discussion, I came back to see the evolution, and I think the debate has been positive. I should point out a few conclusions:
Waldir 18:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Encyclopedia Britannica itself, our gold standard in encyclopediae, has 5 or 6 different levels of articles. I have no problem with extended teaching materials in Wikiversity and wikibooks. However, I think there is a place for shorter more accessible articles here of an introductory nature.
We do not have 5 or 6 levels like EB, but only 3 (Simple Wikipedia, introductory articles and main articles). This is a major goal of Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible and has resulted in several other introductory articles: Category:Introductions has the list.
The more accessible we make our material, the better, as far as I am concerned. The more ways we present of doing this, the better.-- Filll 19:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
simple:Genetics - It's a good start - perhaps even better than this one - but Punnet squares refuse to appear overnight without my input. *sigh* Adam Cuerden talk 18:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
I've started a discussion on the Genetics Wikiproject talk: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Genetics#Introduction_to_Genetics considering whether this article should exist (compared to the current Genetics article, which is FA), and asking if anyone has a clear idea on what to do with it. If you're watching this page and are interested in the article, please chime in! Thanks! Madeleine ✉ ✍ 06:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
You know, I think the entry is getting more complicated and difficult to understand as it goes on. We're repeating the problems of Genetics.
Here's the old version:
Here's the new version:
Just read the two versions for a second. Which is easier to read?
You're introducing the term "inheritance" to define "genetics." It's sort of circular, like saying, "Morphine causes sleep because it contains a dormitive principle." The next thing you discuss is the exception -- "some, but not all".
The second sentence is too long. I once wrote a sentence that long for an article, and my editor made me stand there while he read it aloud.
If you're explaining difficult ideas, one way to make it simpler is to use simpler sentences.
One of the problems is that we're under the gun to prove that we can improve the article before it's deleted. I think we should remove the deletion tag to begin with, because from the discussion it looks as if there's no consensus, and it won't be deleted.
Let's stop for a second and think it out. What are the important ideas that we want to convey in this article? What's the simplest way we can convey them?
There's an expression -- "Sometimes you're rowing so hard you don't have time to look at your compass." Let's look at the compass. Where are we going with this?
I hope you don't take this wrong, Tim, because I appreciate your work, but it's actually very difficult to write a simple article. I've been there.
William Butler Yeats said, "Easy reading is hard writing." And Ezra Pound said, "Easy writing is damn hard reading." Nbauman ( talk) 16:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Please post reviews below, I'm particularly interested in pieces of the article that are hard to understand or assume too much prior knowledge. Thanks to everybody who can contribute. Tim Vickers ( talk) 18:41, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to add another RfC as a regular RfC. Nbauman ( talk) 21:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
I find a bit odd to find a glossary section right after the foreword. Isn't this what wikilinks are for? I think it breaks down the pace of the whole thing. GoEThe ( talk) 23:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
You might want to check out the template Template:Genetics glossary, which is used in the current Gene article. -- Madeleine ✉ ✍ 02:45, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
BTW, for reference, here's the definition of DNA in Introduction_to_genetics#Glossary:
and here's the definition from Template:Genetics_glossary:
Which one is easier for an ordinary reader to understand?
In order to understand the Genetics definition, you have to know what a polymer is, what base pairs are, and what nucleotides are. If somebody doesn't know what DNA is, I doubt that they would know what a polymer is.
If you didn't know what DNA was, this definition tells you, "DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid." That's no help. It doesn't even give the reason DNA is so important, which is that it carries genetic information. Nbauman ( talk)
Hi all
excellent work btw !
just a couple of major points i would like ppls opinions on.
At the moment the line "The way genetics and environment interact to produce a trait can be complicated:"
this seems to imply that the environment has an effect on the production of the trait whereas i believe a more accurate line would be
"The way genetics and environment interact to affect a trait can be complicated:"
it is also my belief that this still does not accurately show that a trait is in fact an inherited DNA function and NOT affected by environment, simply that the trait can be overridden by environment. It does not matter if your family has a history of heart disease and you live in a high fat environment, put that same person in a low fat environment and the risk of heart attack is suddenly greatly decreased - however the trait for heart attack due to arythmia (for example) is still present. This environment does not remove the trait, it simply masks it.
in the section Genes and Inheritance "You can think of this process like mixing two hands of cards, shuffling them, and then dealing them out again." - perhaps this could be changed to express more fully the function (or simply removed) ?
"You can think of this process like a pack of cards. The mother has hearts and clubs, the father spades and diamonds. When we reproduce the father gives one set and the mother one set. This means that the child could have Hearts and spades, hearts and diamonds, clubs and spades or clubs and diamonds." this also gives an introduction into basic phenotype classing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.22.111.33 ( talk) 14:23, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
If the gene coding for brown eyes is dominant over the one coding for green eyes how can there be people with greenish-brown eyes?
2009-07-24 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.247.167.70 ( talk) 11:52, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
My mother has green eyes and my father has brown eyes. Oddly enough, neither me or my brother have either green or brown eyes - my brother's eyes are blue and mine are a hazel color, also known as greenish-brown. My grandmother on my mother's side had blue eyes, so my mother carries the blue gene, which explains my brother's blue eyes. So, one of my parents must have a relative with hazel eyes like mine, thus making them carry the gene. Does that help? 66.222.226.225 ( talk) 22:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
As I have learned it the genes coding for brown and green eyes are dominant while the genes for blue and gray eyes are recessive. If you have two dominant genes coding for eye colour or two recessive ones you will have a colour in-between. Your mother have one gene coding for green eyes and one gene for blue ones resulting in her having green ones. Similarly, your father has one gene coding for brown ones and one for grey ones resulting in brown eyes. You have greenish-brown eyes because you happened to inherit both of your parent’s dominant genes for eye colour. In the same way your brother happened to inherit both of his parent’s recessive genes resulting in an eye colour in-between. There are also people with violet eyes but I don’t know what this trait is due to.
2010-05-14 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
As I understand it the pair of genes I described determines main eye colour (brown, greenish-brown/hazel, green, blue, gray-blue/blue-gray, gray). There are additional genes which modifies the hue within those main eye colours. Hair colour is due to the combined effect of many genes. However, reddish streaks are due to a recessive gene which also affect skin colour. Skin colour is not completely hereditary as human skin typically gets darker from exposure to ultraviolet light. But the skin colour without suntan and the ability to achieve it is hereditary. Addiction to tobacco may also make human skin a little more yellowish but I am not sure about that.
2010-05-15 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.
Another possibility is to simply move or copy this article to Wikiversity. Wikiversity is the place to gain technical knowledge about a variety of subjects. One advantage of placing this article at Wikiversity instead of here, is that people who would like to increase their level of expertise on genetics would be able to actually discuss the subject with Wikiversity's mentors. I'm guessing that some people who would go here for a less technical overview of genetics might also need the support network provided by WV. -- AFriedman ( talk) 17:16, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi! I like your idea and I've done just that. I'm not used to citing references the way they're cited in the article, and had a problem with fixing links in references 15 and 21 in Wikiversity. Could you please help me with that? -- AFriedman ( talk) 22:26, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
I've noticed that on the lead section, the words "fail to" cross onto the top left corner of the glossary box. It looks a bit awkward, honestly. Does anyone know a way to get the words off of the glossary box? (I'm still learning how Wikipedia works, so any advice and help would be much appreciated.) The Unraveling Spool of Thread ( talk) 20:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Can someone please change the following sentence:
The information within a particular gene is not always exactly the same between one organism and another, so different copies of a gene do not always give exactly the same instructions
I am completely ignorant on the topic of genes so I didn't edit it, but I am finding it completely ambiguous and out of place.
Between two organisms? as in two people? two parts of the body? What's a particular gene?
Thanks, tropicana 383
For the most part, this article does an excellent job describing the basics of genetics. However, this paragraph (currently the third paragraph in the introduction) is factually incorrect:
Some traits are inherited through our genes, so tall and thin people tend to have tall and thin children; such traits which result due to inheritance alone are called genotypes. Other traits come from interactions between our genes and the environment, so a child might inherit the tendency to be tall, but if they are poorly nourished, they will still be short; such traits which are manifested due to the combined action of inherited genes and environmental circumstances are called phenotypes.
This paragraph describes genotype as "traits inherited through genes" (paraphrased) and phenotype as "traits due to the interaction of genes and environment." (again paraphrased.) This is flat-out incorrect; see the relevant pages for genotype and phenotype for the correct definitions.
That the environment and genes interact to produce phenotype is described in paragraph two; the actual terms "genotype" and "phenotype" are introduced and described in the subsequent section "Genes and inheritance." Thus, the relevant topics are well-covered elsewhere, so I will delete this paragraph. Feel free to discuss this change here.
Luceth ( talk) 02:08, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
I have occasionally heard that bacteria have hundreds of genes and vertebrates tens of thousands. Should the article address the question of how genes may be counted? Jim.henderson ( talk) 13:55, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Anthropology and Human Biology Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human genetics and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library system at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to other academic libraries in the same large metropolitan area) and have been researching these issues sporadically since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human genetics to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk, how I edit) 19:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
(Disclaimer: this is my first participation in any talk page; and w/r G.E. I am a only lay person who's done a little reading.) "Other genes that can be put into crops include a natural insecticide from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis." This says that the relevant gene is an insecticide that comes from a bacteria. (Minor: bacteria -> bacterium.) What I believe it should say is that a gene from a bacterium produces or creates or makes (a protein that is) an insecticide. In sum, I suggest something like: Another gene being put into some crops comes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis; the gene makes a protein that is an insecticide. Brec ( talk) 14:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Hi. The article chromosome sends readers here for an introduction to the topic (of chromosomes), but this article actually makes no mention of that topic. Problemo! Howunusual ( talk) 02:37, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Introduction to genetics/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Personally I think this page is very good on the introduction - I need something that I can read and understand that doesn't seem littered with the medical terms - I'm a student and so a lot of this information is new to me and also very confusing, especially with the medical terms used in other pages and on other sites. Thanks for the easy to read intro and keep up the good work! |
Last edited at 13:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 19:02, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Since 2015, there are many advances in the understanding of DNA and genetics that are not yet reflected here or in the main article.
A short, non-comprehensive list:
I will endeavor to make simple explanatory expansions within the freamwork of the existing article. I wanted to see if there are suggestions or comments before doing so.
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Just to the right of that beautiful rotating gif appears the phrase "In the case of a daughter with alleles for both red and brown hair..." I honestly don't know exactly what one has to do with the other. My possibly incorrect understanding is that an allele is an example of a nucleotide and the nucleotides are the bars that hold the two backbones together. So my question is: Where in this gif would I find the daughter's B allele, her b allele, and her Bb genotype? I gather from the first few comments on this talk page that this is an introductory article, so perhaps my question is fair game.
Page Notes ( talk) 11:43, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Introduction to DNA and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 3#Introduction to DNA until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 ( talk) 17:36, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
Components of the double-helix are not described clearly in Wikipedia, especially in the technical articles. In a desperate search for a clear identification of the nucleotides, I found in the Genes and inheritance section here: nucleotides are identified as "plate-like units in the center". Can we please use a spiral staircase analogy for the double-helix and say the nucleotides are the steps in the spiral staircase? Another point of confusion in this section is in the Punnett square. Capital "B" is used for the brown allele, so can we please use lower case "r" for the red allele, instead of "b"? Rtdrury ( talk) 21:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
The definitions in the respective Wikipedia pages do not appear to differ between genotype and genome. This is also evident in most definitions I found. Is there a difference? Clarification would help - and perhaps a mention in the Introduction to Genetics article ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_genetics).
“The genotype of an organism is its complete set of genetic material”(
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotype). There is a somewhat different definition of genotype from the NHGRI at NIH (
https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/genotype).
“a genome is all the genetic information of an organism” (
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome).
It would also be informative to discuss the genetic information of the entire population of an organism. Does it have a name? How many more genes are present in the population of an organism than in a single individual? Presumably unknown but the current academic thoughts (or lack of) would be interesting.
QuietJohn (
talk)
16:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)