What is the difference between phenotype and genotype?
Genotype is your actual genetic make-up while phenotype is the physical manifestation of your genotype. For example, Mendel’s pea plants have many traits that we can examine. Let’s discuss the trait for plant height. Every plant has two genes for this trait, one from the “father” plant and one from the “mother” plant. The tall allele (T) is dominant to the short allele (t). An allele is simply a particular verson of a gene. So, a plant with the genotype of either TT or Tt will both have the tall phenotype while a plant with the tt genotype will have the short phenotype. Genetics research is great… I just got done with a year and a half at a university myself. Good luck!
