Final answer:
The student's question refers to genomic imprinting, a biological mechanism where the sex of the parent affects the expression of a trait in the offspring. Mendel's experiments with pea plants demonstrate differences between an organism's phenotype, the physical traits observed, and genotype, its genetic makeup. Yet, imprinting involves parent-specific gene expression, which is not demonstrated in Mendel's pea plant experiments.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student is asking about a phenomenon in genetics where the phenotypic expression of an allele is influenced by the sex of the parent from whom the allele was inherited. This is known as genomic imprinting. To clarify the first genetics theory, two alleles for a given gene are expressed and interact to produce an organism's physical characteristics, which are observable traits known as the phenotype. The organism's genetic makeup, including visible and non-expressed alleles, is their genotype. Mendel's experiments with peas showed that the F1 generation expressed the phenotype of one parent but carried alleles from both, making their genotype different.
An example to illustrate this point is when true-breeding plants—one with yellow pods and one with green pods—were cross-fertilized, resulting in F1 offspring that all had the phenotype of yellow pods. Though they had the phenotype of the true-breeding yellow parent, the green pod allele was still present in their genotype, as it reappeared in some of the F2 offspring. Here, phenotypic expression of yellow or green pods is strictly based on dominant and recessive interactions, not parental origin, which contrasts with the imprinting effects where parental origin does matter.
As for the query regarding whether the statement given is true or false, the question appears to lack the necessary context, but if the statement was referring to the imprinting, then the correct answer would be (a), true.