If a man has a recessive sexlinked disorder, he has a 0% chance of passing it onto his son. Why?
1 Answer
Mar 20, 2016
See explanation.
Explanation:
Most sex-linked traits are on the X sex chromosomes. Females have two X sex chromosomes and males have one X and one Y sex chromosomes. A female inherits an X chromosome from each parent. A male inherits an X chromosome exclusively from his mother and a Y chromosome exclusively from his father.
A man with an X-linked recessive disorder cannot pass on the disorder to a son because he exclusively passes on the unaffected Y chromosome to his son. The son's X chromosome comes exclusively from his mother.
The following image shows the inheritance of the X-linked recessive allele for hemophilia in which the father has the disorder and the mother is homozygous for normal blood clotting.
