Essay/Term paper: Gregor mendel's theories of genetic inheritance

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Science Reports

Gregor Mendel's Theories of Genetic Inheritance


Gregor Mendel played a huge role in the underlying principles of genetic
inheritance. He grew up in a Augustinian brotherhood where he learned
agricultural training with basic education. He then went on to the Olmutz
Philisophical Institute and then entered the Augustinian Monestary in 1843.
After 3 years of theological studies, Mendel went to the University of Vienna
where he was influenced by 2 professors, the physicist Doppler and a botanist
named Unger. Here he learned to study science through experimentation and
aroused his interest in the causes of variation in plants. Then in 1857, Mendel
began breeding garden peas in the abbey garen to study inheritance which lead to
his law of Segregation and independent assortment.
Mendel's Law of Segregation stated that the members of a paror of
homologous chromosomes segregate during meiosis and are distributed to
different gametes. This hypothesis can be divided into four main ideas. The
first idea is that alternative versions of genes account for variations in
inherited characters. Different alleles will create different variations in
inherited characters. The sescond idea is that for each character, an organism
inherits two genes, one form each parent. So this means that a homolohous loci
may have matching alleles, as in the true-breeding plants of Mendel's P
generation(parental). If the alleles differ, then there will be F hybrids. The
third idea states that if the two alleles differ, the receessive allele will
have no affect on the organism's appearance. So a F hybrid plant that has
purple flowers, the dominant allele will be the purple-color allele and the
recessive allele would be the white-color allele. The idea is that the two genes
for each character segregate during gamete production.
Independent assortment states that each member of a paor of homologous
chromosome segregates during meiosis independently of the members of other pairs,
so that alleles carried on diffenret chromosomes are different distributed
randomly to the gametes.
In conclusion, Mendel's work was very inportant to the science community
and to this day are being studied.