Mendel on Patterns of Inheritance

had an approach to answering scientific questions that was very different from his colleagues. Most of the scientists in Mendel's day believed that the traits in offspring were a blend of traits from the mother and father. What Mendel sought to prove was that genetic "factors" not specific traits were passed down from generation to generation. But, because most traits did not show up for generation their theory did not prove correct. Mendel realized the implausibility of the blending theory, he understood that if the theory of blending were true, all differences in a race would be eradicated within ten generations and the human race and other organisms would all be carbon copies (Pruitt & Underwood, 2006).

Mendel decided to use his knowledge of plant breeding to further his theory on the distribution of traits using the common garden pea. Mendel cautiously crossbred his plants that created wrinkled seeds with plants that created round seeds. He also did something that was extremely unusual for his time. He used arithmetic to determine that the blending theory was not possible. His 1st generations of crossbred plants (F1) were all round; they were not a mixture of their parents. When he bred these plants with each other, the result was 3:1 ratio of wrinkled seeded plants to round seeded plants. This was the basis for the finding that genetic traits are predisposed to a combination of two factors, either recessive or dominant (Pruitt & Underwood, 2006).

Mendel differed from his colleagues in another way which was that he decided to study only a few traits of the garden pea instead of several traits. Mendel decided to focus on seven specific traits and began his investigations by growing "true-breeding varieties". In view of the fact that these traits were autonomous of one another, it was possible to study the course of those traits mathematically from one generation to the next.

From his studies, Mendel discovered six new conclusions to the scientific community from his experiments. The first one was that phenotypes do not always divulge the actual genotype of an organism. Some factors, which we now call alleles, are recessive while others are dominant.

Another endowment given to us by Mendel was the knowledge that heterozygous parents can pass on either of their alleles to their offspring. The Punnett square can be used to illustrate the former and another of Mendel's legacies to the scientific world. This particular one emphasizes that alleles of one gene are passed to offspring autonomously of alleles of other genes. The white or purple flower is a trait separate from the trait that causes a green or yellow pod. These are traits that are passed from parent to offspring and can be shown in many different patterns independent from one another (Pruitt & Underwood, 2006).

Reference

Pruitt,

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