Making a genetic profile

To make a genetic profile of someone, we look at their phenotype, choose some easily recognisable traits and work out what genotype(s) they could have for those traits.

The traits chosen should be those controlled by single gene pairs as there is too much variation possible when many genes are involved in determining a phenotype. It is also not a good idea to choose traits which people can easily change, such as hair colour. 

It is not always possible to work out their full genotype. If they have the form of the trait caused by the dominant allele we don't know if they are heterozygous or homozygous. (Unless we can tell by seeing their parents or offspring).

If a person has a dominant trait and we can't find out what their full genotype is, we write down the symbol for the dominant allele with a hyphen beside it.

Example: If Reginald Grommet has a rounded nose (rather than pointed), he may have a genotype  of RR or Rr. We simply write R-
 

Yasmina's Genetic profile

We will start by looking at Yas's picture again


In the table below you will see Yasmina's genetic profile based on 6 simple traits. These were selected from those listed on the Mapping Traits website. The numbers in brackets refer to the numbering of those traits on that site.