Question

Gregor Mendel examined simple patterns of inheritance in his work with pea plants. Unlike pea plants, many human traits have complex patterns of inheritance. For example, some traits are controlled by several genes together. What is a trait that probably has a complex pattern of inheritance? Explain your response.

Answer 1

Answer:

Human height probably has a complex pattern of inheritance because people in the same family vary in height. This difference in height suggests that multiple genes may control human height.

Explanation:

Answer 2

Hi

Yes, Gregor Mendel observed the traits in pea plants that were showing simple inheritance pattern and were controlled by one gene and two alleles only.

However, there are many traits that are controlled by many genes and the traits are called polygenic traits which show complex pattern of inheritance.

Such a trait we observe in human population is height.

We can see that sometimes tall parents have short kids and vice versa and sometimes the height of kids is unlike any parent. The height shows enormous amount of variation in human population and unlike pea plant there are NOT only two phenotypes, short or tall.

The trait of height is considered to be controlled by more than 400 genes which causes tremendous amount of variation in human population.

So because alot of genes are involved in human height, therefore it is difficult to separate the effect if one individual gene from another, Furthermore, it is difficult to observe that whether they follow mendelian inheritance pattern or not.

A further complication in this trait is that other than genes, environmental factors also affect the inheritance of trait. For example: If the child has inherited the genes of tall height but he do not has good nutrition and healthy environment, it will badly affect his height and hinder to reach its maximum genetic height.

Hope it help!