One copy of each gene comes from our mom, and the other comes from our dad. This passing on of genetic information from parent to child is called inheritance. In this section, you’ll learn about different types of inheritance patterns and how certain medical conditions can be passed from generation to generation.
Transcript
One copy of each gene comes from our mom and the other comes from our dad. Our moms and dads too, have one copy from each of their parents. This passing on of genetic information from parent to child is called inheritance
Sometimes medical conditions can be inherited.
Several conditions are classified as complex traits.
Complex traits result from interactions between genes and our environment, like diet and exercise. Complex traits are often the most common medical conditions we think of such as adult onset diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, and various birth defects like spina bifida
As of now, we really don’t understand a majority of these complex traits since they are not due to one single cause. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the risk for being affected with a complex trait, even if it appears to be inherited in your family. Genetic testing for complex traits is still being investigated.
On the other hand, there are many conditions where we do know the cause and inheritance pattern. DNA variants that are considered mutations can either arise as a new change in an affected person, or be inherited with few or several affected people in the same family.
There are different inheritance patterns and we will now examine them one by one.