gen-explain-mendelian-inheritance-as-you-would-to-a-capable-stud-544f

Explain Mendelian inheritance as you would to a capable student, in 3-4 sentences.

Mendelian inheritance describes how traits are passed from parents to offspring through discrete units called genes, which come in different versions called alleles. Each parent contributes one allele for each gene, and offspring inherit one allele from each parent, making them either homozygous (two identical alleles) or heterozygous (two different alleles). Some alleles are dominant and mask the effects of recessive alleles, which explains why you can carry a trait without expressing it. These principles allow us to predict inheritance patterns, like why two brown-eyed parents can sometimes have a blue-eyed child if both carry a recessive allele.