Question

A person with brown hair inherited genes for brown hair from one parent and genes for red hair from the other parent. Which of these describes the red hair genes?

recessive

heterozygous

dominant

homozygous

Answer 1

The red hair genes can be described as **recessive**. In this scenario, the person has brown hair, which is typically considered a dominant trait, while the presence of red hair genes, which doesn't express in the phenotype, indicates that they are recessive.

To clarify the other terms:
- **Heterozygous** refers to having two different alleles for a particular gene (one for brown hair and one for red hair in this case).
- **Dominant** refers to the allele that expresses itself in the phenotype when present.
- **Homozygous** refers to having two identical alleles for a gene.

So the best description for the red hair genes in this context is recessive.