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Which genes are more dominant? Mother's or Father's? Or the same?

This is just a little thing I was wondering.

Let's say you have 4 people: 1 Chinese man, 1 Chinese woman, 1 Black man, 1 Black woman


Couple 1. The Chinese man impregnates the Black woman
Couple 2. The Black man impregnates the Chinese woman

Will the babies look broadly the same race? Or will the e.g. male's genes be more dominant, meaning the baby in couple 1 will look more Chinese, whilst the baby in couple 2 will look more Black?

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Half of a babies chromosomes come from the male, half from the female. There is no gender dominance, it just depends which chromosome you get from which parent.

Spoiler

Reply 2
Original post by Selkarn
This is just a little thing I was wondering.

Let's say you have 4 people: 1 Chinese man, 1 Chinese woman, 1 Black man, 1 Black woman


Couple 1. The Chinese man impregnates the Black woman
Couple 2. The Black man impregnates the Chinese woman

Will the babies look broadly the same race? Or will the e.g. male's genes be more dominant, meaning the baby in couple 1 will look more Chinese, whilst the baby in couple 2 will look more Black?


Just thought id say That is the least likely combination in the world!! Anyway, sexual reproduction arranges chromosomes in offspring randomly so the child could look more like either race. Theres no telling whether the mother or fathers genes wud be more dominant
Reply 3
Homologous pairs of chromosomes are arranged randomly during sexual reproduction, you cannot tell which genes will be more dominant but the child will have the same amount of genetic info from each parent
Reply 4
Just wondering, not being racist or anything, but why do black and white mixes always look more black than white? Like if the white one is blonde, blue-eyed and fair skin with straight hair and the other is black the kid will always be brown-skinned, curly haired, brown eyed and have other African features.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by nmudz_009
Just thought id say That is the least likely combination in the world!! Anyway, sexual reproduction arranges chromosomes in offspring randomly so the child could look more like either race. Theres no telling whether the mother or fathers genes wud be more dominant


Just thought I'd butt in and say that this really isn't the least likely combination - in Jamaica there are loads of Chinese people as you can educate yourself about here , and therefore many mixed black and chinese people. Like my mother :smile: Also, I know that it's arbitrary but in my experience the dad's genes seem more dominant - I know a 1/2 chinese, 1/2 white girl who looks literally 100% chinese, nothing like her blonde mum :smile:
Original post by Einheri
Just wondering, not being racist or anything, but why do black and white mixes always look more black than white?


Arbitrary - I am blonde albeit not with straight hair or blue eyes but I'm definitely paler than most mixed people - my mother is black/chinese and looks black, my dad's white.
Original post by Einheri
Just wondering, not being racist or anything, but why do black and white mixes always look more black than white? Like if the white one is blonde, blue-eyed and fair skin with straight hair and the other is black the kid will always be brown-skinned, curly haired, brown eyed and have other African features.


They don't.
I've seen mixed raced children who are actually blonde. Leona Lewis for example has fair hair and light eyes.
Reply 8
X = Female.
Y = Male.

Y is dominant.
X is recessive.

Example: (where capital letter = dominant)

xY = Male
xx = Female
YY = Male

Females carry XX
Males carry XY
Reply 9
Original post by Einheri
Just wondering, not being racist or anything, but why do black and white mixes always look more black than white? Like if the white one is blonde, blue-eyed and fair skin with straight hair and the other is black the kid will always be brown-skinned, curly haired, brown eyed and have other African features.


It's a common thing that happens everywhere in the world. E.g. I was talking to a half-White, half-Thai girl. Everyone thinks she looks Thai in the UK, and everyone thinks she looks White in Thailand. Differences stand out more.

As a White guy, if I went to Zimbabwe and had a kid with a black woman, no doubt the 100% black people there would treat the child like a White person outsider.
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 10
I don't think it's random. There are dominant genes and less dominant, in your case, the black genes are more dominant so the chances of getting a black baby is higher than getting a Chinese looking baby, but both features will be noticeable, it's just that the black features will be more noticeable since it's the dominant one. Hope it helps.
Original post by I'm_Unsafe.
Half of a babies chromosomes come from the male, half from the female. There is no gender dominance, it just depends which chromosome you get from which parent.

Spoiler



However you could end up in a situation where both set of chromosomes can be from either of the parents during independent assortment of alleles :colondollar:
The whole process of variation is very much dynamic.
Reply 12
Original post by Einheri
Just wondering, not being racist or anything, but why do black and white mixes always look more black than white? Like if the white one is blonde, blue-eyed and fair skin with straight hair and the other is black the kid will always be brown-skinned, curly haired, brown eyed and have other African features.


brown eye is dominant, same with black hair i think. The skin one's not true tho
To add some more confusion you can get some gender based genetic imprinting whereby some bits of chromosome that are active are always the ones from the mother or father (as can be seen on Chromosome 15 with Prader Willi syndrome/Angelman syndrome - different effects from similar mutations on the different paternal chromosomes). It's quite uncommon though, and I don't know of it affecting race, but what I don't know about genetics could fill several libraries.

Wikipedia link for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genomic_Imprinting
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 14
dominance isn’t linked to sex (male/female),

genes are expressed in different ways ...

dominant heterozygous pair (one dominant allele, one recessive) - dominant characteristic expressed
dominant homozygous pair (both alleles are the same, dominant) - dominant characteristic expressed

or
recessive homozygous pair (both alleles are the same, recessive) - recessive characteristic expressed.

however co-dominance can occur where both alleles cause both characteristics to be expressed together.
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 15
Original post by Nickbotto
I don't think it's random. There are dominant genes and less dominant, in your case, the black genes are more dominant so the chances of getting a black baby is higher than getting a Chinese looking baby, but both features will be noticeable, it's just that the black features will be more noticeable since it's the dominant one. Hope it helps.


Really?
Reply 16
Alleles are dominant or recessive regardless of which parent they came from.
Genetics isn't that simple. It depends.
Reply 18
Original post by Selkarn
This is just a little thing I was wondering.

Let's say you have 4 people: 1 Chinese man, 1 Chinese woman, 1 Black man, 1 Black woman


Couple 1. The Chinese man impregnates the Black woman
Couple 2. The Black man impregnates the Chinese woman

Will the babies look broadly the same race? Or will the e.g. male's genes be more dominant, meaning the baby in couple 1 will look more Chinese, whilst the baby in couple 2 will look more Black?


The babies would inherit equal numbers of chromosomes from the father and the mother. What the baby looks like does not indicate who they are more genetically similar to, only a handful of genes out of 20000+ determine how we look i.e. things like skin colour and eye colour.

Just wondering, not being racist or anything, but why do black and white mixes always look more black than white? Like if the white one is blonde, blue-eyed and fair skin with straight hair and the other is black the kid will always be brown-skinned, curly haired, brown eyed and have other African features.


Because genes for darker eyes and hair tend to be dominant.

Y is dominant.
X is recessive.

Example: (where capital letter = dominant)

xY = Male
xx = Female
YY = Male


Dominance and recessiveness only apply to genes not whole chromosomes. They also tend to refer to genes on autosomes (any chromosome besides X and Y). The Y chromosome contains very little genetic material, it is tiny compared to the other chromosomes and it makes you male because it is the sex determining chromosome. It carries one gene that causes testis to develop.
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 19
Original post by Josh_Dey
X = Female.
Y = Male.

Y is dominant.
X is recessive.

Example: (where capital letter = dominant)

xY = Male
xx = Female
YY = Male

Females carry XX
Males carry XY


YY isnt a combination that occurs

female gamete, the egg will always have a X chromosome

male gamete, the sperm has a 50:50 chance of having either a Y or an X from the male


that gives half male and half female

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