Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An organism that has different alleles at a particular gene locus on homologous chromosomes.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A zygote formed by the union of two unlike gametes.
  • noun In Mendelian phraseology, a hybrid animal or plant which combines the characters of two dissimilar parents; a mule-form.
  • Of or pertaining to a fertilized egg, or to origin from a fertilized egg, which is formed by the union of two opposite allelomorphic germ-cells: as, heterozygote characters.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun genetics A diploid individual that has different alleles at one or more genetic loci.
  • noun biology A bacteriophage that has two different copies of its genetic material and so produces two types of offspring.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (genetics) an organism having two different alleles of a particular gene and so giving rise to varying offspring

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From hetero- +‎ zygote

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Examples

  • I added it to the list on our Instructors' Blog, stated as follows:Students should be able to define dominance as a particular relationship between the effects of two alleles; dominance is said to exist when the phenotype of the heterozygote is the same as that of a homozygote for one of the alleles the 'dominant' one.

    How to teach about dominance Rosie Redfield 2007

  • I added it to the list on our Instructors' Blog, stated as follows:Students should be able to define dominance as a particular relationship between the effects of two alleles; dominance is said to exist when the phenotype of the heterozygote is the same as that of a homozygote for one of the alleles the 'dominant' one.

    Archive 2007-11-01 Rosie Redfield 2007

  • Other common autosomal recessive diseases such as sickle cell anemia have been found to protect carriers from other diseases, a concept known as heterozygote advantage.

    "Sicker than a Doorknob" 2007

  • This is where the heterozygote has a higher fitness than either homozygote.

    Red Lynx Simulator - The Panda's Thumb 2010

  • He constructed a model with populations subdivided into numerous, semi-isolated subpopulations, or demes, in which spontaneous chromosome rearrangements with heterozygote disadvantage occur.

    The Panda's Thumb: Arthur Hunt Archives 2010

  • Lande 1979 looked at the problem of fixation for chromosomal rearrangements with heterozygote disadvantage.

    The Panda's Thumb: Arthur Hunt Archives 2010

  • He constructed a model with populations subdivided into numerous, semi-isolated subpopulations, or demes, in which spontaneous chromosome rearrangements with heterozygote disadvantage occur.

    The Panda's Thumb: September 2009 Archives 2009

  • Lande 1979 looked at the problem of fixation for chromosomal rearrangements with heterozygote disadvantage.

    The Rise of Human Chromosome 2: Beyond the Deme - The Panda's Thumb 2009

  • Lande 1979 looked at the problem of fixation for chromosomal rearrangements with heterozygote disadvantage.

    The Panda's Thumb: September 2009 Archives 2009

  • But if two dominant, or two recessive, alleles occur together in a heterozygote, interesting things can happen.

    The Rise of Human Chromosome 2: Beyond the Deme - The Panda's Thumb 2009

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