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Re: Phenotype

Posted by Phaino on 2025-November-6 16:41:03, Thursday
In reply to Re: Phenotype posted by monkeyLostInHead on 2025-November-6 16:32:12, Thursday

It's analogous in the sense that we understand yellow, green, and blue to be discreet colours. If you go to wavelengths, then sure, the analogy breaks. If you think more colloquially about "blue", "green", "yellow", then green is usually seen as a mix of blue and yellow. So, closer to blue, but not just blue itself.

By phenotype, I mean physical traits. Genetically speaking, males have female traits encoded into their genes, the inverse is also true, it's just that these are usually not expressed because of hormones. So, with breasts. It's not that there is some special female only gene that causes breast growth, but rather that males and females both have this gene, but it's usually only expressed (part of the phenotype) in females due to their estrogen.

Ditto for many other traits, too. A female can develop male pattern baldness (a phenotypically male trait) if they start taking testosterone. Males can develop female fat distribution through estrogen, also part of the phenotype. The hormones alter where fat is stored and at what levels. As a side tangent, it also impacts collagen. Females usually have straight collagen patterns, males have criss-crossed patterns. Cross-sex hormones flip this.

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