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Extensions of the Laws of Inheritance

16 November, 2015 - 15:36

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Identify non-Mendelian inheritance patterns such as incomplete dominance, codominance, multiple alleles, and sex linkage from the results of crosses
  • Explain the effect of linkage and recombination on gamete genotypes
  • Explain the phenotypic outcomes of epistatic effects among genes

Mendel studied traits with only one mode of inheritance in pea plants. The inheritance of the traits he studied all followed the relatively simple pattern of dominant and recessive alleles for a single characteristic. There are several important modes of inheritance, discovered after Mendel’s work, that do not follow the dominant and recessive, single-gene model.