Biology: genotype and phenotype

Tutoring biology, terms are important. The tutor mentions the ideas of genotype and phenotype.

Continuing about genes and alleles (see my posts here and here), the concepts of genotype and phenotype seem to follow logically.

Genotype and phenotype are concepts that arise from the fact that, for most genes, a person inherits one allele from their mother and one from their father, which can be different. Continuing with the example of wanting a smart phone or not (from this post), a person could end up with the alleles Ww. Since W means they want a smart phone, and it’s dominant, said person will want a cell phone.

Genotype is the person’s set of alleles: WW, Ww, or ww. Phenotype is the characteristic the person manifests. In this case, there are only two phenotypes: they either want a smart phone or not.

When the person demonstrates the recessive phenotype – in this case, not wanting a smart phone – their genotype must be ww. However, when the person exhibits the dominant phenotype – in this case, wanting a smart phone – their genotype could be WW or Ww.

The phenotype is what you observe, whereas the genotype means DNA encoding.

Source:

bio.libretexts.org