Kaplan Nursing Entrance Exam Practice 2025 – Comprehensive Prep

The situation described involves the production of both tall and short offspring from the cross of a tall plant and a short plant, which illustrates the law of segregation. This principle states that allele pairs separate during the formation of gametes, and each gamete carries only one allele for each gene.

In the context of this cross, the tall plant likely possesses a dominant allele for height, while the short plant has homozygous recessive alleles. When these plants are crossed, the resulting offspring inherit one allele from each parent. If the tall plant is heterozygous, the offspring can show variations in phenotype: some inheriting the dominant tall allele and others the recessive short allele, illustrating how traits separate during gamete formation and can express differently in offspring.

This principle is foundational in understanding how traits are inherited and displayed in genetics. It highlights the concept that an organism's physical traits are determined by the alleles it carries, and how these alleles segregate can lead to variations in those traits among offspring.