National Science Education Standards.
Life Science ()Reproduction and heredity
Reproduction is a characteristic of all living systems; because no individual organism lives forever, reproduction is essential to the continuation of every species. Some organisms reproduce asexually. Other organisms reproduce sexually.
In many species, including humans, females produce eggs and males produce sperm. Plants also reproduce sexually--the egg and sperm are produced in the flowers of flowering plants. An egg and sperm unite to begin development of a new individual. That new individual receives genetic information from its mother (via the egg) and its father (via the sperm). Sexually produced offspring never are identical to either of their parents.
Every organism requires a set of instructions for specifying its traits. Heredity is the passage of these instructions from one generation to another.
Hereditary information is contained in genes, located in the chromosomes of each cell. Each gene carries a single unit of information. An inherited trait of an individual can be determined by one or by many genes, and a single gene can influence more than one trait. A human cell contains many thousands of different genes.
The characteristics of an organism can be described in terms of a combination of traits. Some traits are inherited and others result from interactions with the environment.
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