If neither of her parents have the disease, what would her genotype be?

Get ready for the BioBeyond - Disease Detective Exam! Explore disease pathways with engaging quizzes, hints, and explanations. Enhance your diagnostic skills today!

To determine the genotype of an individual whose parents do not have a particular disease, it's crucial to understand the genetic inheritance patterns associated with that disease. Assuming the disease in question is a trait that follows Mendelian genetics, let's analyze the implications of the parents not expressing the disease.

If neither parent has the disease, and the disease is inherited in an autosomal recessive manner, this means that both parents must carry at least one dominant allele to be phenotypically normal. In a simple case where the normal allele is denoted as "A" and the disease-causing allele as "S," a parent with the genotype "AA" would not carry the disease allele, while "AS" would indicate a carrier state (one disease allele, one normal allele).

In this scenario, if the disease is recessive and neither parent possesses the disease (which usually manifests in the homozygous recessive state, "SS"), the child cannot inherit the "SS" genotype. Instead, the child must inherit a normal allele from both parents, resulting in the homozygous dominant genotype "AA" for that trait.

Thus, in this context, identifying the child's genotype as "AA" is accurate, as both parents' lack of the disease indicates

Subscribe

Get the latest from Examzify

You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our privacy policy