The Father of Genetics by Casey Carreau

Gregor Mendel

user_1412169741 — 2015-01-26 14:30:17 UTC

Gregor Mendel was born in Czech Republic in 1822. After years of being a priest, Mendel pursued genetics or the study of hereditary. We now consider Gregor Mendel the Father of Genetics due to his research and contributions.

Peas

user_1412169741 — 2015-01-26 14:35:51 UTC

Gregor Mendel easily and efficiently carried out scientific work that could have taken centuries by using peas. This only took two growing seasons. Odd as it may seem, Mendel choosing peas was a very smart move. Mendel used peas as the subject of his experiments partly because peas are small and easy to grow, but also because pea plants can produce hundreds of offspring. Mendel using his prior knowledge that pea flowers are self pollinating, easily manipulated the traits of the pea plants by a technique called cross-pollination. The offspring produced by this cross-pollination were called hybrids.

Parental Generation

user_1412169741 — 2015-01-29 04:37:32 UTC

As Gregor Mendel was doing genetic crossovers with pea plants, a name was inspired for the original pair of plants. These plants were called the parental generation. The original pair of plants were given this name because they were products of self-pollination thus having entirely different traits from one another

F1 Generation Hybrids

user_1412169741 — 2015-01-29 04:52:45 UTC

F1 Hypbrid plants surprised Mendel greatly. For each trait that was studied, Mendel observed that the offspring had the characteristics of only one of its parents. Mendel then concluded that traits passed on to one individual were determined by factors passed from one parental generation to the next. It was determined that a single gene controlled each of the traits, and the different forms of the gene were called alleles.

F2 Generation Hybrids

user_1412169741 — 2015-01-29 05:03:07 UTC

F2 Hybrids were the second generation of hybrids. Mendel discovered that Recessive allele traits appeared in the F2 Generation one fourth of the time. From this information, Mendel determined that a segregation of alleles happened in F2 Hybrids

Principle of Dominance

user_1412169741 — 2015-01-29 05:19:48 UTC

From more research on alleles, Mendel also concluded the principle of dominance. This stated that some alleles were dominant while others were recessive. Basically put, when a dominant allele is present, the organism will gain that dominant trait, but when there is no dominant allele present, the organism will gain the recessive allele trait. As stated before, Mendel discovered that this separation of alleles happened during the formation of the gametes or sex cells