Final answer:
An allele is a variant form of a gene that can be dominant or recessive and determines various traits in organisms. An acrostic poem helps to illustrate the concept of alleles and their importance in genetics.
Step-by-step explanation:
An allele is an alternative form of a gene that is located at a specific position on a specific chromosome. These alleles can lead to different traits such as determinants for height in pea plants, where dominant alleles symbolize traits that are expressed in the phenotype over recessive alleles, which are expressed only when two recessive alleles are present. For a better understanding, an acrostic poem for 'allele' could be as follows:
- A variant form of a given gene
- Located at the same locus on the chromosome
- Like tall or short peas in Mendel's tome
- Expression of traits can be dominant or muted
- Let's not forget, it's by mutations constituted
- Each allele's frequency speaks of genetics' rich diversity
Remember, in genetic nomenclature, dominant alleles are denoted with uppercase letters while the recessive alleles are in lowercase. For instance, in cats, 'Mc' represents the dominant mackerel pattern and 'mc' the recessive classic tabby pattern. So, a mackerel-stripe tabby would be 'Mc/Mc' or 'Mc/mc', and a classic tabby would be 'mc/m