Lecture 1: Mendelian Genetics

• Mendel’s Experiments
•Principles of Segregation
Mendel Used Pea Plants to Study Inheritance
Mendel Crossed Peas to Study Inheritance of
Seven Visible Traits
 Why Mendal Chosen Pea
• Self-pollination
Principles of Segregation
Test Cross Heterozygote x Homozygous Recessive
• Sexual reproduction
• Each pair of alleles separate into gametes of
ale and females parent plants.
• Gametes fuse and give rise to progeny.
• Mendal calls this separation or segregation
process the “splitting of hybrids.
 Significance inferences
• Separation of pairs of determiners resulted in
a purity of gametes.
• “ The paired genes separate from one
another and are distributed to different sex
cells or gametes”.
Terminology
• Trait - inherited characters (pea plant height)
• Gene - basic unit of inheritance that controls a
trait (gene for pea height)
- segment of DNA on chromosome
• Alleles - variant forms of gene (tall & dward
pea plant height)
- caused by variation in DNA sequence
• Genotype - genetic constitution
- Diploid organisms: Two copies of each gene
- Genotype describes both copies for a gene
example: DD, Dd and dd for pea seed color
• Phenotype- observable properties
“appearance”
• for a trait (tall or dwarf pea plant)
- Determined by the genotype for gene