what is the difference between a dominant and recessive alleles
Making the world better, one answer at a time. Dominant is an allele that will always be expressed in a heterozygous individual. Recessive on other hand are traits that will only be expressed in a homozygous condition. Organisms receive one allele for each trait from each parent, thus you have two alleles for each trait.
Dominance in genetics is a relationship between alleles of one gene, in which the effect on phenotype of one allele masks the contribution of a second allele at the same locus. The first allele is dominant and the second allele is recessive. For genes on an autosome (any chromosome other than a sex chromosome), the alleles and their associated traits are autosomal dominant or autosomal recessive. Dominance is a key concept in Mendelian inheritance and classical genetics. Often the dominant allele codes for a functional protein whereas the recessive allele does not. A classic example of dominance is the inheritance of seed shape, for example a pea shape in peas.