Answer to Question #292449 in Genetics for Smilynne

Question

23. What is a carrier? If a carrier mates with a homozygous dominant individual, what 

are the chances one of their kids will get a disease?

24. If a heterozygous parent has a disease caused by a dominant allele and mates with 

a homozygous recessive individual, what are the chances that their child will get the 

disease?

Answer 1

A carrier is an individual who carries and is capable of passing on a genetic mutation associated with a disease and may or may not display disease symptoms. Carriers are associated with diseases inherited as recessive traits.

If you are born to parents who both carry the same autosomal recessive gene, you have a 1 in 4 chance of inheriting the abnormal gene from both parents and developing the disease.

Autosomal Recessive Disorders.

Thus there is a 25% chance that each offspring from heterozygous parents will inherit both mutated alleles.