Approximately 8 percent of African Americans carry the recessive sickle cell trait. However, sickle cell carriers do not develop full-blown sickle cell anemia. In fact, they may function normally but show some symptoms, such as reduced oxygen distribution throughout the body and exhaustion after exercise. This illustrates the ______ genetic inheritance pattern.

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The description of sickle cell carriers showing some symptoms but functioning normally indicates incomplete dominance, where the heterozygous genotype (carriers) exhibits an intermediate phenotype between homozygous dominant and homozygous recessive genotypes. This is different from dominant-recessive inheritance, where the dominant allele completely masks the recessive allele and polygenic inheritance, where multiple genes contribute to a trait. Mutated is not a relevant term in the context of genetic inheritance patterns.

Approximately 8 Percent of African Americans Carry the Recessive Sickle