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Michael and Christy are going to have a baby. Michael has recessive blue eyes, and Christy has dominant brown eyes. Use genes to identify and explain the eye color that their baby will likely have.

A. The baby will have blue eyes.
B. The baby will have brown eyes.
C. The baby will have green eyes.
D. The baby's eye color cannot be determined from the information provided.

User JJoao
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1 Answer

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Final answer:

The baby of Michael with blue eyes and Christy with brown eyes will likely have brown eyes, which is the dominant trait. However, without knowing if Christy is homozygous or heterozygous for the brown eye trait, we cannot definitively determine the baby's eye color.

Step-by-step explanation:

When determining the eye color of a baby from parents Michael with recessive blue eyes and Christy with dominant brown eyes, the most likely outcome is that the baby will inherit the dominant brown eye color. However, without knowing Christy's full genotype, whether she is homozygous or heterozygous for the brown eye trait, we cannot be certain. If Christy carries the recessive blue allele, there's a chance the baby could have blue eyes if they inherit the recessive allele from both parents. The inheritance of eye color is an example of non-Mendelian inheritance, where there are multiple alleles involved and the patterns can be more complex than simple Mendelian inheritance.

Eye color inheritance typically follows a pattern where brown is dominant over green and blue, green is dominant over blue, and blue is recessive. This means that a brown-eyed individual can carry the genetic information for green or blue eyes if they are heterozygous (Bb or Bg for instance, where B represents the brown allele and b or g represent blue or green respectively).

Therefore, the most likely answer is B. The baby will have brown eyes, but without additional genetic information about Christy's alleles, there's still a possibility for different outcomes, meaning answer D, The baby's eye color cannot be determined from the information provided, could also be considered correct.

User Punchman
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