Why are gene mutations more common in recessive genes than dominant genes?
821121
Because dominant mutations will be selected against.  Keep in mind for all dominant mutations, a phenotype will be expressed, and in a lot of these cases, the gene may not be passed on because the affected person may not be able to reproduce (or will be dead before he/she can reproduce). \n\nRecessive mutations can be carried without expressing a phenotype, so unless both alleles are mutated, no phenotype will be expressed.
615959
Because of the recessive and dominant genes that you inherit.\nWhen the sperm and the egg join together, they each carry half of the total genetic mixture that creates a person. Sometimes, the skin-color genes of one person "dominate" over that of the other, but other times the "recessive" genes outnumber the dominant ones and so the other skin color "wins".\n\nI'm not a genetics expert, but from my little knowledge I can tell you that it's all the result of a pretty much random combination process. Sometimes the recessive (or "weaker") genes outnumber the dominant ones, and "win", while sometimes the dominant ones do.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/genetics
530826
Short answer: because a lot of brown eyed people carry around blue eyes in their genes. \n\nThe long, yet really unclear answer:\n\nDominance will depend largely on the number of VNTRs codominantly inherited from each parent.  A set of VNTRs is an allele.  \n\nOne thing first: brown eye = pigment production\n                 blue eye= no pigment production\n                 Green eyes= little pigment produced\n                 Shades of yellow to brown= depends on the   \n                 amount of pigment produced.\n\nThat brown eyes are more dominant than blue eyes simply means that the number of VNTRs (strength of the allele) to express pigmentation in the eye are more abundant than the no pigmentation allele, which could also be completely absent if both parents are homozygous dominant (AA) for the gene.  \n\nNow when an allele is Heterozygote (Aa), this means that pigment get expressed simply because it's there to express and the body ignores the rest, same as the homozygous dominant condition.  \n\nAnd here's the neat part.  In homozygous recessive (aa) there could be an infinite number of VNTRs for no pigmentation, which if inherited in large numbers could inhibit the pigmentation genes completely, and thus be heterozygous and still have blue eyes. \n\nGreen and yellow eyes are the result of a steady heterozygous condition where no set of genes are expressed more than the other, so only a little bit of pigment is expressed, making an interesting colour of eyes. \n\nI´m a bit foggy on the details on how VNTRs did the whole shenannigan, so don´t quote me on this.
120440
Genetic mutaton happens for MANY reasons. Cosmic radiation is the least of them.\n\nTranscription errors is the largest way a mutation occurs. When a cell is copied, the DNA is copied and sometimes the mecahnism for doing this gets confused and makes slight changes. This is the most common way for mutation to happen.\nThere are outside factors liek environment. Toxins, pollutants. It has been shown that toxins have altered the germ (eggs and sperm) cells in amphibians.\n\nAll of this changes happens very slowly. It is not like a fish a born with 4 legs and walks to shore. More like a few fish out of millions have a slightly better advantage for their environment, so they eat better, breed more and have more offspring. The trait is then propagated through the population. Many mutations happen that do NOT lead to improvements, these die off. Back to our fish, over hundreds of thousands of generations, more mutations have happened allowing them to bettter compete for resoruces. Eventually many small changes have changed the nature of the fish.\n\nLook at divergent evolution. The North American Whitetail Deer. It used to comingle along the entore easter Seaboard cost. Now, due to habitat loss, highways and development, they are segregated. Over the past 150 years some visible changes have occured. The souther variety is smaller, and has some other characteristics not seen in the Northern deer. Why? Random mutations are congregated in smaller populations and not intermixed. In time, it will become different enough tobe a new species.\nIsolation is another reason for change, or in some cases not changing. A population becomes isolated and has little reason for random mutation to change them and they remain the same ove rtime while the surrounding areas undergo change.\nIt is a fairly neat system how all of these interactions play into one another.
336439
Mutation generates differences.  Most mutations are deleterious and natural selection tends to eliminate them quickly.  Many are neutral and are retained to some degree because there's nothing weeding them out.  A few are positive and variation is also lost in that case because selection will eliminate the other variations.\n\nThere is a process called frequency dependent selection whereby a trait is advantageous but only if its rare.  For example since hosts adapt to a certain kind of parasite, it is advantageous for a parasite to have rare characteristics.  That way the host is unlikely to have seen that model before and the parasite is likely to be successful.  In that case selection actually favors a lot of versions in a species because as soon as anything become really numerous it becomes deleterious.
686786
It's possible to have mutations in the DNA that won't change the amino acid sequence. Usually only 2 of the 3 bases of a given codon are necessary to specificy the particular amino acid.\n\nAs a result, a mutation could occur in the DNA which would not change the protein. However, it's still a heritable mutation, and could be used to establish relationships between individuals and species.
952198
Recessive genetic traits
370115
1st part.... usually dominants are beneficial and more common in the population, but not always.  Huntington's disease which is fatal is dominant.  This has stayed in the population because it usually doesn't make the person sick until they are past child-bearing years.  Polydactyly (6 or more digits) is dominant as is syndactyly (fused digits).  Dwarfism is also dominant.\n2nd part...I don't see why not although I don't know of an example.
1177562
you're asking this question because the darker-skin pigment genes *do* tend to be dominant or co-dominant. the answer may go back to your father's parentage ... were his recent ancestors all latino? recessive genes can skip generations before showing up.
113257
The 2 genes are rather called alleles which means different forms of the same gene. One allele is dominant and the other one is recessive. The one that is expressed is the dominant one and the hidden one is recessive. The organism is said to be heterozygous or hybrid.
182301
Alleles. Mutations are just general changes in the DNA, they do not necessarily have to be in a gene, therefore, not all mutations cause the creation of new alleles (ie if a mutation occurred in an area that did not code for anything)
922905
There really is no essential difference in the way\nthe genes are inherited.  The difference is in how\nthey affect the offspring.  In polygenic inheritance\nthere are many gene pairs involved, each of which\nhas a small effect and the effects of each pair are\nadditive with the others.  Such genes control things\nlike height, weight, skin color, etc.  The genes in\nwhat is usually called Mendelian inheritance have a\nlarger and more noticeable effect.  Actually the\nexamples given in biology courses are usually\nover simplified.  The case of eye color is a good\nexample.  What is usually taught is that brown eyes\nare dominant and blue eyes recessive, but this is\ntrue only if all other things are equal, that is, there\nare no other genes affecting eye color to interfere.\nIn the fruit fly there are dozens of gene pairs that\naffect eye color, and probably as many in human\nbeings.  My father had blue eyes, my mother has\nbrown eyes.  I have never been able to decide\nwhat color my eyes are.  They are sort of blue\naround the edges, yellow more toward the center,\nwith a reddish brown spot in one of them.  Also\nwhat about eyes that are described as green, gray\nhazel, violet?
386933
With a transposable element, i believe it is easier to control where the genes get spliced in.  using a plasmid to infect the gene would likely be random
275786
Traits that are genetically based can be inherited either dominantly or recessively.  Traits refer to what we call a phenotype, and the specific combination of DNA leading to this phenotype we call the genotype.  As an example, let's consider a pea plant which has two descrete and separate heights: large and small.  To analyze the inheritance of plant height, you first establish small or large plants that breed true, for example, crossing a large plant with a large plant always breeds large plants.  Then, you breed true-breeding large and small plants together.  If large is dominant (and small recessive), the offspring will all be large, because the 'large' genotype is dominanting the 'small' genotype.  If small is dominant the offspring are small.  Dominant and recessive are mutually exclusive classifications of the genotype.  \n\nTo extend this analysis further, you can cross that large x small generation (called the F1 generation) together (this is called an intercross).  Let's say large is dominant and the F1 plants are all large.  Intercrossing the F1 will lead to both small and large offspring.  If only one gene is responsible for the plant height, then the ratio of large:small plants will be 3:1.  \n\nThis is the essence of genetics, the linkage of genes to discrete, measurable characteristics.  Not all characteristics are genetic, and for complex issues such as diseases many genes play a role.  But the essence is still the same.  It works because for every person or plant, you receive one genome set from your mother and one genome set from your father, thus the inheritable characteristics you develop can then be passed down to the next generation.
485911
because if its y linked then women can't have it because women don't have a Y chromosome while if its X linked it is usually recessive so males don't have a dominate allele to counteract it so the recessive shows through and to have two X recessive alleles in one cell is very rare because the male has to have the recessive phenotype and the female has to have a heterozygous genotype. Sorry for the in depth language.
201401
A few reasons...one is because, statisticaly, random flucuations are more likely in a small population, kind of like if you flip a coin twice, you might get 2 heads or 2 tails, but if you flip a coin 100 times, you'll probaly get something close to 50-50. \n\nAnother is that rare genetic types are easily 'diluted' in a large population, but can become significant in a small population. Think about why family members shouldn't marry: most of us have some harmful recessive genes, but it's unlikely that our spouse will have the same one, so it's not a problem. But, if we marry within our family, there's a much greater chance that our spouse also carries the recessive gene.  In small populations, more recessive traits will be expressed.\n\nFinally, a small popluation is usually isolated from the larger one, so it might be exposed to specific environmental conditions that force adaptation or create some selective pressure. One famous example of this is Darwin's finches, on the Galapagos islands: because each island has specific types of plants, each island's population of birds was under pressure to adopt to eat those plants, and they each ended up with a beak taylored to their own island's seeds.
513720
we're all mutants, that's how things evolve, a mutation in genes