Inheritence

Sickle cell is an incompletely dominant trait present in many people of African descent in the world. Two parents must have sickle cell anemia or sickle cell trait in order to pass one the disease, however if only one parent passes on the sickle cell trait then the person will be a carrier of the disease and be able to pass it on, yet no be effected by it. Each person has two factors called alleles, and these are what the parent will pass onto their children. If the child is to inherit sickle cell disease he must acquire a sickle cell trait from both parents. The alleles a child must have in order to have sickle cell is 2 lower case or recessive traits (ss, the s represents the recessive trait for sickle cell mutation. The dominant trait for regular hemoglobin production is S). Also another thing to take note of is the trait is autosomal so therefore it is not sex linked. It is on the 11th Chromosome and the mutation itself is caused by a defect in the making of hemoglobin.