4 Genetic "inheritance" passed from parent to child

"Duh, her eyelashes are curled really suredown from his mother, huh? " Maybe you are already familiar with sentences like that, which generally discuss the similarity of a person's physical characteristics with their parents. Not surprisingly, this is because genetics is said to be the main actor that makes a child usually similar or even very similar to his parents. In fact, what are the “inheritance” that can be passed on from parent to child?

What are some things that can be passed from parent to child?

It turns out that it's not just a figment, you know! A child can indeed have characteristics that his parents also have. Are you curious about what can be passed on from parent to child? Here's an example:

1. Risk of disease

The human body is unique in that it consists of trillions of cells. In each of these cells, there is a nuclear or nuclear structure which contains chromosomes. Each chromosome is provided with strands of deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. Well, genes are parts of DNA that are later passed on from parent to child.

Each child normally has two copies of the gene from both parents. When later this inherited DNA is damaged, its structure will change.

Damage to the DNA structure can be triggered by various things, one of which is exposure to chemicals. This is what then causes disease in the body. Well, the damaged DNA structure can be passed down in children.

Especially if the gene is strong enough, so that it will beat other genes that do not carry disease. Automatically at birth, it is likely that the child already has a risk of hereditary diseases experienced by their parents.

2. Physical characteristics

As previously explained, genes can be said to be part of DNA that carries all the information about parental characteristics to be passed on to their children. Each person's body has more than 20,000 constituent genes, all of which have two different copies obtained from both parents.

Meanwhile, DNA contributes as many as 23 pairs of chromosomes to each child's body. In other words, the father and mother will each donate 23 chromosomes, which ultimately forms a total of 46 chromosomes, aka 23 pairs of chromosomes.

In each chromosome there is a variety of information from genes that play a role in determining the physical appearance of a child. Because the body has two different pairs of chromosomes from the father and mother, automatically the gene pairs are also not the same.

This pair of genes is later responsible for the formation of a person's distinctive physical features or appearance. As a result, children also have certain characteristics because they are passed down from their parents.

That is why some of the physical features of a child are usually similar to the mother, while some other parts of the body resemble the father.

In fact, it is possible that a child is more likely to be just like his father or mother. Again, this is because a child's DNA is a combination of both parents.

As a result, the hair color, the color of the eyeballs, the shape of the nose, the thickness of the eyebrows, the curl of the eyelashes, and other things in children are very similar to their parents.

3. Height

Quoting from the Genetics Home Reference, the researchers believe that about 80 percent of a child's height is influenced by heredity. Or in other words, the child's body can be tall or short, that is, because he inherits a "talent" from his parents.

You see, there are various variations of genes that are responsible for determining the size of a child's height. That is why, it is not surprising to see that there are children who are very tall, while there are also those who are ordinary or tend to be short.

This will usually be easily answered when looking at the posture of the parents. In a sense, the physical height of the child is actually obtained because it is passed down from parents with a similar physique.

However, it was another story when siblings turned out to have different heights. This could be due to the combination of genes of the two parents who are different, so the size of the height between brothers and sisters is usually not the same.

4. Breast size

It is not new anymore if genetic or hereditary factors have been mentioned as one of the determinants of how big a woman's breast size is. In fact, this is true.

A study published in BMC Medical Genetics, found that the genetic variation of parents, especially mothers, determine the size of the daughter's breast. This means that girls born to mothers with large breasts are likely to have large breasts as well.

On the other hand, if the mother of a daughter has medium or even small breasts, the chances of her growing breast size are not that great either.

Supported by the results of research from the journal Twin Research and Human Genetics, which found that about 56 percent of the probability that breast size is passed from parent to child, the results were obtained by comparing the bra cup sizes of about 16,000 women.