Standards:
- S7L3.a and S7L3.c
Gregor Johann Mendel was
a German-speaking Silesian scientist
and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder
of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for
centuries that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits,
Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863
established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws
of Mendelian inheritance.
Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants:
plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position
and color. With seed color, he showed that when a yellow pea and a green pea
were bred together their offspring plant was always yellow. However, in the
next generation of plants, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1:3. To
explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms “recessive” and “dominant” in
reference to certain traits. (In the preceding example, green peas are
recessive and yellow peas are dominant.) He published his work in 1866, demonstrating
the actions of invisible “factors”—now called genes—in providing for
visible traits in predictable ways.
The profound significance of Mendel's work was not
recognized until the turn of the 20th century (more than three decades later)
with the independent rediscovery of these laws. Erich von
Tschermak, Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and William Jasper
Spillmanindependently verified several of Mendel's experimental findings,
ushering in the modern age of genetics.
Copyrights: From Wikipedia...
-Andy Iyabor
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