Mendel’s Patterns of Inheritance

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BIO 100 Mendel imagined that each of the traits is controlled by hereditary. He realized that his results could be explained by supposing these factors occur in pairs. Hereditary factors are passed on whole and usually unaltered to the offspring. He realized during reproduction each parent contributes on hereditary factor for each trait they get one from the mother and one from the father. His interpretations are still relevant today but instead of alleles they are called genes. His novel was able to help use learn about traits. He bred pea’s plants with themselves, by doing this he knew what genes were passed on. Funny thing is he didn’t really know what genes really were. He thought they were alleles. The advantage he gained was peas have a lot of traits. Those traits are very distinguishable. They had seven different traits; they were pea shape, pea pod shape, pea color, pea pod color, plant height, pea albumin color, and leaf position. Hereditary characteristics are passed form parent to offspring as units of particles. We refer to hereditary of a given trait as a gene. There are different forms of genes are called alleles. Mendel’s factors correspond to alleles. Prior to reproduction alleles are separated so that specialized reproductive cells called gametes contain only one allele form each pair. At fertilization gametes fuse each contributing one allele for each trait to the new offspring. Individuals carry only two alleles for every gene. These two alleles may be identical in which case the individual is said to be homozygous for that trait. Sometimes the two alleles may differ and hence the

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