Chromosomes and Genes

Take a moment to consider how traits are passed from parent to offspring inside the cell. The information for the traits of an organism is stored in DNA, as genes on chromosomes. All living things have genes and chromosomes. Depending on the plant or animal, the size and number of chromosomes are different. Think of chromosomes as giant set of instructions for living things.

Chromosomes Two-By-Two

Chromosomes come in matching pairs, one pair from each parent. Humans, for example, have a total of 46 chromosomes, 23 from the mother and another 23 from the father. With two sets of chromosomes, children inherit two copies of each gene, one from each parent.

The image below, call a karyotype, shows the chromosomes of a human, lined up in pairs. The only two chromosomes that do not always come in matching pairs are the sex chromosomes, X and Y. In humans, girls have two matching X chromosomes. Boys, however, have a Y chromosome and only one X chromosome. By looking at the sex chromosomes in the image below, we can tell that the person this karyotype belongs to is male.

 References

Additional images and illustrations from Wikimedia. Ant picture taken by en:User:Ways(link is external)