Question:
1. How is curly hair inherited?
2. Which gene is dominant and recessive? The straight or curly hair gene?
Replies:
I was always taught that curly hair is dominant over straight and that hair
texture is incompletely dominant. So if one parent is curly/curly and the
other is straight/straight their offspring would be straight/curly which
phenotypically is a combination of the two or wavy. If both parents are wavy
(ie. straight/curly) their children could be straight, curly or wavy. I'm
not sure if this is the actual way hair texture is inherited or whether my
professors just used it as an easy but exaggerated example.
NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.