Genetics studies how living organisms inherit many of the features of their ancestors – for example, children usually look and act like other people in their family. Genetics tries to identify which features are inherited, and work out the details of how these features are passed from generation to generation.
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In genetics, a feature of an organism is called a "trait". Some traits are features of an organism's physical appearance, for example, a person's eye-color, height or weight. There are many other types of traits and these range from aspects of behavior to resistance to disease. Traits are often inherited, for example tall and thin people tend to have tall and thin children. Other traits come from the interaction between inherited features and the environment. For example a child might inherit the tendency to be tall, but if there is very little food where they live and they are poorly nourished, they will still be short. The way genetics and environment interact to produce a trait can be complicated: for example, the chances of somebody dying of cancer or heart disease seem to depend on both their family history and their lifestyle.
