Mendel’s works in Genetics and Mendelian laws of Inheritance

Gregor  Mendel  (1822 –   1884) was a Monk in  Austria. He is referred to as father of Genetics because of his work which formed the foundation for scientific study of heredity and variation Mendel’s Experiment.

Gregor Mendel carried out several experiment on how hereditary characters were being transmitted from generation to generation. He worked with garden pea called possum sativum.

Reasons for using the pea are follows.

_    Peas are usually self-pollinating and he could pollinated them by himself.

_   They have a very short life span than animals and some other plants.

1. He planted tall plants for several generation and  discovered that the plant produced  were all plants in the same way he planted short pea plants  for  several generation. He also discovered that the plants produced  were all short.
2. He proceeded to plant tall plants and short  pea plants . By  the time the flowers were  produced    of the collected pollen grains of the tall pea plants tagged of male and pollinated the stigma of the shrt plant which is labeled as female. He collected the pollen grain of the short plant and placed them on the stigma of the tall plant.
3. Mendel area again picked the seed and he discovered that the plant were all tall. This he referred to it as first filial   generation  (fi)
4. Mendel them crossed the f1 plants,   collected their  got from this were tall and short in the ratio 3 : 1 . He then called this stage second filial generation.

Mendelian Traits:

Mendel discovered trait or characters that be transmitted from parents to offspring. He studied various inherited characteristics in pea plant. The traits or character are: height/length, colour of seeds, surface of seed coat. Other examples of traits that can be transmitted from parents to offspring include: the blood group, the Rhesus factor, skin colour eye colour shape and body weight.

Mendelian Laws of inheritance

Mendel’s Laws of heredity explains the principals of Mendelian inheritance.mendel produced offspring of pea plant by self-polling on and cross –pollination and as a result of his experiments,he came out with his certain deductions termed mendel’s law.The two laws are

1. First law

Law of segregation states that genes are responsible for the development of individual and that they are independently transmitted from one generation to another without undergoing any alteration.

1. Second Law

Law of independence assortment of genes

This law states that each character behaves as a separate unit and pair of alleles for a given character distributes itself in the gemetes during formation does not affect the way other allelic pair for other character distribute themselves. OR the Law State that when more than one factors are considered, each character behaves as a separate unit and is inherited independently of any other character.