is there somewhere i can figure out what traits (eye color, hair color etc.) my child will have?

Question

like one of those dominant/recessive charts that you used in 7th grade biology.. by plugging in the fathers and mothers traits.

but don't both sets of grandparents play a small role too?

anyways, thanks :)

Answer 1

It's called a punnet square. It's very hard to determine exactly just by doing a simple punnets square but you can give it a try, (its kinda fun once you get started). Each individual zygote has a genotype (letter makeup) and phenotype ("picture" of letter). You can use any letter, uppercase is always dominant, lowercase is always recessive. Now each parent can either be heterozygous which means you can be Bb, (both dominant and recessive), or homozygous, bb or BB. You can do a few punnet squares to play around and see what you get. Answer is long but hope it helps to better understand.

Answer 2

It is much more complicated than with peas with smooth skins and ones with wrinkled skins that you studied at school.

The problem is that a lot of features (like noses) are composites of several genes and the result of that mix is hard to predict. To make it even worse there are recessive genes that may not show up for some features but if they are on both sides of the family then they may appear in a child.

I know a family in which most of the parents and the grandparents have brown eyes but no blue eyes. The last three grandchildren from two of the sons have very bright blue eyes and all of the children of the daughter have green eyes. Go figure!

Answer 3

grandparents play role because they give their children recessive traits. the best you can do is take a look at yours, the fathers, and the grandparents and taking a guess, because its all random anyway. you can't do one of those charts (can't remember the actual name for them) because you don't know what recessive traits you have.