A person with a genotype of TT, what is their phenotype?
How do I describe phenotype? Do I plug in characteristics; dominant/recessive?
To determine the phenotype of an individual with a given genotype, you need to understand the concept of dominant and recessive traits.
Phenotype refers to the observable physical or biochemical characteristics displayed by an organism, while genotype refers to the genetic makeup or set of genes an organism possesses.
In the context of dominant and recessive traits, dominant alleles are those that are expressed in the phenotype even if present in only one copy, whereas recessive alleles are only expressed in the phenotype if present in two copies (one from each parent).
In your example, the person has a genotype of TT, which implies that both alleles are the same and dominant genes. Since the dominant alleles are always expressed in the phenotype, the person will display the dominant trait associated with the T allele.
To describe the phenotype, you need to know what characteristic the T allele represents. For example, if the T allele is associated with brown hair and the recessive allele t is associated with blond hair, then a person with the genotype TT will have a phenotype of brown hair.
It is important to note that this explanation assumes that the specific gene being discussed follows a simple dominant-recessive inheritance pattern, which is not always the case for all traits or genes.