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DON'T HATE ON THE TRAIT
by BirdBrain Science2016
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Ever wonder why people all look and act differently? This informational text explains that people’s traits, like their different appearances and personalities, develop mainly from two sources: their parents' genes and the environment. As you read, identify the different ways how genes and environment can affect people’s traits.
Think about the building where you live. If it’s a house or an apartment building, it’s made up of water pipes, a roof, different rooms, and thousands of wooden boards. On your street there are probably many different buildings and each building is very, very complicated. For people to be able to live inside, all the thousands of different parts have to work and fit together. To build something with so many parts, architects1 have to draw every single part. They need to think about every electrical plug, toilet, and wall. The architects then give their drawings to people who build the house. These drawings are the instructions that show them what to build. Since there are so many different parts to put together, every building needs its own instructions.

Just like buildings, all people are built differently too. For instance, the people in your class might all have different colors of eyes, hair, and skin. People can change what they look like somewhat by cutting their hair or wearing different clothes. You can decide what some parts of you look like on the outside, but you can’t decide how you are built. The parts of you that you cannot change are in your genes. Genes are the instructions for your body and they are inside of every one of your cells.2 They are found in every other living thing on earth too, and are the instructions for how to make each of those things. Your genes tell your cells what to do. They tell your body how to grow, make you look a certain way, and even decide what your personality will be like.

Genes give you characteristics3 that can make you look the same as other people or very different from them. Your genes might give you brown eyes, black hair, and make you 5 feet 4 inches tall. All other living things also have characteristics that came from their genes. A palm tree might be tall, brown, skinny, and have green leaves at the top. Each of those is a characteristic of that palm tree. Another name for a characteristic that we use in science is trait. A trait is any part of a living thing that was determined by its genes, by its environment, or by both.

There are three different reasons why the person and the palm tree are the way they are:

5.How does the text’s explanation of variation contribute to the central idea?