Question

How does heredity affect flexibility?

Answer 1

The Heredity or biological inheritance is passing on of the traits from parents to their offspring’s or the next generation either by asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction. Remember that the flexibility which is also referred to as limberness refers to the level of movement in a joint or series of joints, and length in muscles that induce a bending movement.

Complete answer:
Does heredity actually affect flexibility? While the answer to this question is
The fundamental unit of heredity is gene, this gene codes for polypeptides which can be either enzymes or structural proteins which are important for a certain trait. Genetics is the study of genes which seeks to uncover which genes are responsible for a particular trait.

So, if you are flexible and your parents and grandparents are flexible as you don’t wonder, it’s because they have passed the particular trait to you.
Now here heredity affects the amount of flexibility which is present in the joints and it may not affect as well. Flexibility varies between individuals, specifically in terms of difference in muscle length of multi-joint muscles.

For example some people are genetically gifted to develop their joint structure through flexibility which allows them to rotate the joints to an extent that normal people cannot rotate; as a result these particular groups of people tend to have higher flexibility and can be scouted in Olympics especially for Gymnastics.

Note: Not all traits are passed from one to another generation, and heredity can or cannot affect flexibility present in joints. Flexibility is just a trait and it may or may not be passed through heredity as it is not compulsory to gain all the characters or traits from the previous generations (ancestors / parents). By this we can conclude that flexibility can be affected by heredity and gene is the fundamental unit of heredity.