| dominant idea | An idea that governs all one's actions and thoughts. (05 Mar 2000) |
|---|---|
| dominant inheritance | dominance of traits |
| dominant lethal trait | Trait, expressed in the phenotype if present in the genotype, that precludes having descendants. All such cases are necessarily sporadic and must represent new mutations as the usual methods of classical genetics provide no means of demonstrating any genetic component whatsoever, except for tenuous arguments such as advanced paternal age. Molecular biology may help although the methods may be tedious; if there is an epistatic gene that may mask the trait, the logic is more tractable, though complex. (05 Mar 2000) |
| dominant oncogene | <genetics, molecular biology, oncology> A gene that stimulates cell proliferation and can drastically increase the risk of cancer development when present in a single copy. (09 Oct 1997) |
| dominant species | <biology, ecology, zoology> For each stratum, dominant species are those that, when ranked in descending rank order and cumulatively totaled, immediately exceed 50 percent of the total dominance measure, plus any additional species comprising 20 percent or more of the total dominance measure for the stratum. (09 Oct 1997) |
| dominant trait | An outstanding mental or physical characteristic. See: dominance of traits. (05 Mar 2000) |