How to Use allele in a Sentence

allele

noun
  • The toy and miniature schnauzers analyzed in the study contained the small allele, while the giant schnauzers contained the large allele.
    NBC News, 27 Jan. 2022
  • If egg and sperm fusion had occurred, the offspring would have two alleles.
    Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY, 7 June 2019
  • In six, the mother lizard had two different alleles, or variants of the same gene, that came from a mother and a father.
    Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY, 7 June 2019
  • This older female, in turn, received one of the alleles from her mother and the other from her father.
    Meilan Solly, Smithsonian, 6 June 2019
  • The places where those repeats occur on a chromosome are called alleles.
    Gina Barton, USA TODAY, 17 June 2023
  • That’s because presumably the blonde allele comes from a common ancestor, which just happened to be over-sampled in a high drift regime.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 4 May 2012
  • Six of these pairs contained two alleles, or gene variants, carried by the water dragon.
    Meilan Solly, Smithsonian, 6 June 2019
  • The Duffy negative allele was nearly absent in Europeans, and present in frequencies of ~95% in West Africa.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 15 Apr. 2010
  • Those encounters left traces of human alleles in Neanderthal genomes, in the same way that Neanderthals, in turn, left traces in our modern genomes.
    Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 10 July 2019
  • Just like humans, canines inherit one allele from each parent for a certain gene.
    Fionna M. D. Samuels, Scientific American, 5 Oct. 2022
  • In wild canids, wolves usually had two copies of the large allele with a few exceptions, while non-wolf species including foxes, jackals and African hunting dogs all had two copies of the small allele.
    Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Jan. 2022
  • This mutation creates a point of variation, resulting in what the team describes as either a small allele or a large allele.
    NBC News, 27 Jan. 2022
  • The new allele accounts for another 1% all by itself, the researchers estimate.
    Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 16 May 2018
  • These APOE genes — everyone has two of them — come in four slightly different variants called alleles.
    Paul Sisson, sandiegouniontribune.com, 14 July 2017
  • Viewing the algorithm through the lens of evolution, genes are the players, and each gene has a number of different strategies in the form of genetic variations, or alleles.
    Quanta Magazine, 18 June 2014
  • Natural selection would then have strongly favored the union of those alleles that worked well together.
    Viviane Callier, Quanta Magazine, 8 May 2023
  • The other allele, called HO^P, gives a male smaller horns---but, fascinatingly, this version comes with its own benefit:a better chance of surviving.
    Breanna Draxler, Discover Magazine, 21 Aug. 2013
  • If the recessive trait is caused by a minor allele with a frequency of p, p2 can converge upon zero very rapidly as p decreases in frequency.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 18 July 2013
  • Each variant has a version (more precisely, one of the alleles in a single nucleotide polymorphism) associated with a small boost to the trait in question.
    Charles Murray, WSJ, 27 Jan. 2020
  • For example, some of the archaic alleles Sankararaman spotted in Africans were in genes that suppress tumors and regulate hormones.
    Ann Gibbons, Science | AAAS, 20 Feb. 2020
  • For example, the equations don’t account for mutations, which would introduce new alleles, or strategies, into the game.
    Quanta Magazine, 18 June 2014
  • An allele is a genetic variant, which arises through mutation.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 17 Sep. 2013
  • The gene’s association with Alzheimer’s, first reported in 1993, relates to one version of it, known as an allele, that dramatically increases the risk of illness.
    Jason Ulrich, Scientific American, 1 Aug. 2021
  • This locus has an allele within it that is almost disjoint in frequency between Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 11 Sep. 2013
  • Thanks to the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes recovered from ancient bones and teeth, scientists can recognize certain alleles that belong to our extinct cousins.
    Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 21 Oct. 2019
  • Perhaps early in development, genes may be more active, and just one allele consistently presses the button.
    Charles Choi, Discover Magazine, 25 Feb. 2017
  • Some of these ancient alleles were beneficial, such as one that boosted immune responses.
    Ann Gibbons, Science | AAAS, 23 Oct. 2017
  • The reduced susceptibility to ceftriaxone seemed to be the result of a penA60 allele mutation.
    Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes, 22 Jan. 2023
  • Whereas a recessive allele requires two instances of it to be inherited together.
    Mira Lazine, Discover Magazine, 12 Sep. 2022
  • That means the companies must translate the demanding argot of genetics — alleles and phenotypes and centromeres — into something approachable, even simple, for physicians and laypersons alike.
    Thomas Goetz, WIRED, 17 Nov. 2007

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'allele.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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