Critical Thinking Activities - Chapter 12


Question 1. Both codominance and polygenic traits provide intermediate phenotypes, yet are due to quite different mechanisms. How can we distinguish between them?

Question 2. Lysenko claimed that he could "vernalize" wheat or make it cold-hardy by storing seeds or growing it in refrigerated conditions: the inheritance of acquired characteristics. He and his co-workers did get survival of some wheat plants farther north than common wheat usually grows. However, Western critics claimed he did not use pure strains of wheat and mixed seed would allow these results under standard genetics without any inheritance of acquired characteristics. Explain how mixed seed or impure strains would mimic "vernalization."


Answers are available to instructors in the Instructor's Manual.

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