reciprocal cross
- noun
- /rɪˈsɪprəkl krɔs/
- Specialized
:
cruzamiento recíproco
- In a genetic experiment, the researchers performed a reciprocal cross between two plants to study inheritance patterns.
What if you did a reciprocal cross for let's say the pea color?
- What if you did a reciprocal cross for let's say the pea color?
Examples
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What if you did a reciprocal cross for let's say the pea color?
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The study showed significant genetic variability among parents and their direct and reciprocal crosses.
Academic text (2014) -
However, this cannot be definitively proven without a reciprocal cross.
Blog text (26) -
To demonstrate the effects of parental genotypes, the scientist conducted a reciprocal cross with two different species of fruit flies.
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The results from the reciprocal cross revealed important differences in traits based on which parent contributed specific alleles.
Synonyms
An experiment that crosses parents both ways to see which parent affects their young
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built from 'reciprocal' (meaning mutual or reversed) + 'cross' (a breeding between genotypes), so its meaning — a cross performed in both directions or with parental roles reversed — follows directly from the constituents. Although technical, the semantic relation is transparent and cross-linguistically expressed similarly in scientific terminology, so a learner who knows both words can infer the MWE's sense.
Etymology
Reciprocal cross comes from the idea of doing a breeding cross 'both ways'. Scientists literally 'swap' which parent is the father and which is the mother, so the reciprocal part means they reverse roles and this shows if the sex of the parent changes how a trait is passed on.
