Do you think these sisters look alike? Click on image for full size (350 Kb) Courtesy of Corel

Aunt Maggie says you have your father's eyes.
Grandma says you have your mother's smile.

Could you actually have the traits from these other people? If you are genetically related to them then yes, you could. Half of your genes are from your mother and half are from your father. But you might look more like one of them than the other. Why is that?

Tucked within chromosomes in each of the trillions of cells in your body are genes that you inherited from your parents. Your have two versions of each type of gene. One comes from your mother and the other comes from your father. Both genes of a pair deal with the same trait, but they might have different instructions. For instance, one gene for eye color might say blue while the other one says brown.

One of those genes wins out and its instructions are carried out. It's called the dominant gene. The other one is still there but your body doesn't listen to its instructions. It's called a recessive gene.