Meiosis and Mendelian Genetics
Study Guide
You should be familiar with all the vocabulary terms associated with the concepts below. A complete list of
terms can be found on p.195 and p.221.
Meiosis (6.1, 6.2, 6.6, 7.3)
• Know the purpose of meiosis
• Be able to identify the key differences between mitosis and meiosis (purpose, location,
products)
• Be able to describe events in meiosis that lead to increased genetic variation
• Be able to predict the relative frequency that two alleles will be inherited together based
on their locations on the same chromosome
Basic Mendelian Genetics (6.3, 6.4, 6.5)
• Be able to relate the Law of Segregation to events in meiosis
• Be able to relate the Law of Independent Assortment to events in meiosis
• Given parents’ genotypes and/or phenotypes, be able to predict genotypic and
phenotypic ratios of possible offspring (one or two traits)
• Given offspring’s genotypes and/or phenotypes, be able to give the genotypes of the
parents (one or two traits)
Complex Patterns of Inheritance (7.1, 7.2)
• Given the phenotypes of offspring and/or parents, be able to identify what special
inheritance patterns are illustrated (incomplete dominance, co-dominance, multiple alleles,
sex-linked, polygenic)
• Understand that gene expression can be affected by environmental factors
Karyotypes and Pedigrees (7.4)
• Given a human karyotype, be able to tell the gender of the individual as well as if they
have any chromosomal abnormalities.
• Given a description of a family, be able to construct a pedigree that reflects the
description
• Given a pedigree of a human family, be able to indicate the mode of inheritance of a
disease (recessive, dominant, or sex-linked).
• Given a pedigree of a human family, be able to identify the genotypes of unidentified
family members.