Genetics Cheat Sheet

Genetics is the study of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms.

is a molecule that encodes the genetic instru­ctions used in the develo­pment and functi­oning of all known living organisms and many viruses.

DNA is a nucleic acid; alongside proteins and carboh­ydr­ates, nucleic acids compose the three major macrom­ole­cules essential for all known forms of life.

Ribonu­cleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule. It's implicated in a varied sort of biological roles in coding, decoding, regula­tion, and expression of genes.

DNA and RNA are nucleic acids, and, along with proteins, constitute the three major macrom­ole­cules essential for all known forms of life.

Like DNA, RNA is assembled as a chain of nucleo­tides, but unlike DNA it is more often found in nature as a single­-strand folded unto itself, rather than a paired double­-st­rand.

Ploidy is the number of sets of chromo­somes in the nucleus of a cell.

An allele, or allel, is one of a number of altern­ative forms of the same gene or same genetic locus.

Zygosity is the degree of similarity of the alleles for a trait in an organism.

A cell is said to be homozygous for a particular gene when identical alleles of the gene are present on both homologous chromo­somes.

A diploid organism is hetero­zygous at a gene locus when its cells contain two different alleles of a gene.