What is allele?

An allele is like a different version of a recipe that lives inside your body’s cells.

Imagine you have two cookie jars in your kitchen, one is labeled “Chocolate Chip,” and the other is labeled “Oatmeal Raisin.” Each jar represents an allele, and together, they make up the full set of ingredients for your favorite cookies. Just like you can choose which jar to use when baking, your body uses different alleles to decide how certain traits will show up, like eye color or hair texture.

Your body has a recipe book with many pages, and each page is a gene. Sometimes there are two versions of the same recipe on those pages, that’s where alleles come in! One version might say “make your eyes blue,” and the other might say “make your eyes brown.” Depending on which recipe gets used more, you’ll end up with one color or the other.

It’s like having two different colored crayons in your hand, even though you have both, sometimes only one color shows up when you draw. That’s how alleles work in your body, they decide what features will appear!