In this deck, we'll explore monohybrid inheritance, which is how single-gene characteristics are passed from one generation to the next. We'll start with the essential vocabulary that geneticists use.

First, the term 'inheritance' itself simply means the transmission of genetic information from one generation to the next. This information determines an organism's characteristics.

The genetic information an organism has is called its genotype. This refers to the specific alleles, or versions of a gene, that are present. The observable feature that results from this genotype is called the phenotype. For example, the alleles for eye colour are the genotype, while the actual eye colour you see is the phenotype.