allele
Sign in to saveAn allele is a variant of the sequence of nucleotides at a particular location, or locus, on a DNA molecule.
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An allele is a specific version of a gene—a variant in the DNA sequence at a particular spot on a chromosome. Alleles matter because different versions of the same gene can produce different traits, which is why people can have different eye colors, blood types, or susceptibility to certain conditions even though they share the same genes.
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Article
9 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Alleles that lead to dominant or recessive phenotypes
- Multiple alleles
- Genotype frequencies
- Allelic dominance in genetic disorders
- Epialleles
- Idiomorph
- See also
- References and notes
An allele is a variant of the sequence of nucleotides at a particular location, or locus, on a DNA molecule.
Alleles can differ at a single position through single-nucleotide polymorphisms, but they can also have insertions and deletions of up to several thousand base pairs. Most alleles result in little or no change in the characteristics of an individual organism but sometimes different alleles can result in different observable phenotypic traits such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria, developmental mutations in fruit flies, and genetic diseases in humans.