by James Morris
Illustration by Talia Niederman
We are all, in a way, familiar with genetics. We know that children resemble their parents. We know that there are sometimes uncanny similarities among distant family members. And not a day goes by without some mention of genetics in the news – a gene is implicated in a disease; DNA testing is used to solve a crime; another genome is sequenced.
Yet we might struggle with certain details. What is a genome and why do we care about its sequence? What are genes and how do they relate to traits we see all around us? Why do some traits get passed on – brown eyes, red hair, high blood pressure – but not always, and sometimes in seemingly random ways?
