I understand mostly about how traits are passed through parents to children, but how does the exact mutation for sickle cell get passed down onto a child? I’m so confused.
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It’s genetic. That’s how *all* traits are passed from parent to child, so if you don’t know that, you don’t know how traits are passed from parent to child. That’s ok though.
We inherit our genes from our parents. Each parent provides us with half of our genetic material. Half from the sperm, and half from the egg. When the sperm fertilizes the egg, these genes mix and create a new genome that is uniquely yours, but made up of genes from your mom and dad.
If both parents either have sickle cell or have 1 copy of the gene with the mutation (it takes 2 copies to have the disease) any child can wind up as a carrier (has 1 gene with the mutation) or have the disease itself (got 2 copies of the gene with the mutation).
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