If your phenotype is free earlobes and free earlobes are dominant, what is your genotype?

Biology · Middle School · Tue Nov 03 2020

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If free earlobes (which are dominant) represent your phenotype, your genotype can be either homozygous dominant (two dominant alleles) or heterozygous (one dominant and one recessive allele) for the earlobe trait.

The letters used to represent alleles are typically uppercase for dominant alleles and lowercase for recessive alleles. In this case, let's use the letter "F" to represent the allele for free earlobes and the letter "f" to represent the allele for attached earlobes (which is recessive).


  • If your genotype is homozygous dominant (two dominant alleles), it would be represented as FF.
  • If your genotype is heterozygous (one dominant and one recessive allele), it would be represented as Ff.

Both of these genotypes (FF or Ff) would result in the phenotype of having free earlobes because the presence of at least one dominant allele (F) would express the dominant trait, as attached earlobes (represented by the recessive allele, ff) would only be expressed if an individual has two copies of the recessive allele (ff).