What is a recessive gene?

Question:For each body characteristic every person has two genes - one from their mother and one from their father. In some cases a gene will be overridden if paired with a dominant gene, the ignored gene is described as being recessive
www.haemophiliacare.co.uk/advate/gloss...

Hope this helps.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: For each body characteristic every person has two genes - one from their mother and one from their father. In some cases a gene will be overridden if paired with a dominant gene, the ignored gene is described as being recessive
www.haemophiliacare.co.uk/advate/gloss...

Hope this helps.

for a text book answer the best place to check is www.wikipedia.com
but basically you get genes from your parents, and if you get a recessive one, it means you pick up a gene that is rare, or not likely to occur. A good example is red hair.

A simple answer is that a recessive gene requires that you get that gene from both parents in order for you to have the trait. Blue eyes are an example. You have to have the Blue Blue genes to have blue eyes. If you are blue brown gene for eye color you will have brown eyes. If your parents have blue brown, they will have brown eyes, but can pass the blue blue to you.

It is one that hides. Some genes do, some don't. Call the genes for eye color B for brown and b for blue. You get one each from your parents.

There are 4 possibilities:

BB
Bb
bB
bb

(actually there are about 7, which is why we have hazel, grey and green eyes, but this is the textbook explanation.)

Only "bb" children would have blue eyes. But, if two "Bb" parents had a child, and it got "b" from both, you'd have a blue-eyed child from two brown-eyed parents. The "b" may have hidden for one, two or more generations.

Skin color genes are the common example of equal-power genes. Children of one black parent and one white one come out the color of coffee with a lot of cream in it. They may be a tad darker or lighter than the mid-point, but they will be somewhere in between their parents.

Ok, a recessive gene just means that you have to inherit it from BOTH parents to have that trait. An example is hair color. Blond is recessive, brown is dominant. If you get a brown gene from mom and brown from dad, you will have brown hair. If you get a blond from mom and blond from dad, you will have blond hair. If you get brown from one parent and blond from the other parent, you will have brown hair because it is a dominant gene, but be a carrier for blond that you could pass on to your own kids one day. So, to have blond hair, you must get the gene for blond hair from both parents.

Basically, that is it in a nut shell. It does NOT mean a gene or trait that is rare, as someone mentioned. Having 5 fingers on each hand is actually a recessive gene. The dominant gene is having 6 fingers on each hand. BUT, so many more people are recessive for 5 fingers, that the dominant gene for 6 fingers has been nearly bred out of the human gene pool.

Other things, dominant or recessive, can be bred out, too. In fact, scientists (geneticists) are speculating that in 200 years, blond hair will be extinct, and there will be no more blond people.