Ch.

9 HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION

A) Important terms used in the text with their meanings:

 Traits: Any recognizable feature/characteristics in an individual like the

height of a plant or the colour in humans is a character. The type of the
character is a specific trait. For example, height can be tall or short for
garden pea plant. Tall and short are the traits for the character height.
 Homologous chromosome: Chromosomes that are similar with respect
to their size, position of centromere, length of arms, and position of
genes. Such chromosomes associate in pairs in the first stage of
meiosis, each member of the pair being derived from different parent,
one maternal and the other paternal.
 Alleles: One or more alternative forms of a gene on the homologous
chromosome.
 Homozygous: Identical alleles present on homologous chromosome.
(Eg: TT or tt)
 Heterozygous: Non identical alleles present on homologous
chromosomes.(eg: Tt)
 Mutation: i. sudden changes in the hereditary material induced by
external or internal factors. Such changes are permanent changes in the
DNA molecule of an organism. ii. Mutations are heritable changes that
if they appear in somatic cells they are inherited to daughter cells by
mitosis, but if they appear in gamete cells they are inherited to the
offsprings.
 Inheritance: It is the transmission of information in the form of genes
from parents to offsprings. The only characteristics that can be passed
on by inheritance are those enclosed in DNA present in gametes. Traits
acquired during during life time of the parent, such as muscle
development in athletes cannot be passed.
 Gene Flow: Transfer of genetic material from one subpopulation to
another by reproduction or mating.
 Gene Frequency- Number of times a particular gene occurs in a
population.
 Genetic Drift: Change in gene frequency brought by chance.
 Genotype Genetic makeup of organism
 Phenotype-physical appearance of organism.

HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION

GENETICS: It is the study of heredity and variations.

HEREDITY - Transfer of characters from parents to offspring.

* The offspring of the same parents resemble one another as well as to their
parents, yet there are differences among them. These differences are called
variations
Causes of variation:
1. Error in DNA copying mechanism
2. Sexual Reproduction – (i) It involves two different individuals with
their own sets of variations. (ii) It also involves gametes which are
produced as a result of meiosis that involves crossing over leading
to the formation of recombinants or new combinations.
ACCUMULATION OF VARIATION DURING REPRODUCTION
Inheritance from previous generation provides both a common body design
and subtle changes in it for the next generation. When this new generation
reproduces, the second generation will have differences inherited from the
first generation as well as newly created differences. The minor differences
generated between them due to small inaccuracies in DNA copying.

Importance of variation-promotes species survival and evolution.

All variations in a species do not have equal chances of survival in the
environment as selection of variants by environmental factors forms the basis
of evolutionary processes eg., bacteria that can withstand heat will survive
better in a heat wave.

Rules for the inheritance of traits – Mendel’s Contributions

Gregor Mendel is revered as ‘Father of Genetics’. He worked with garden pea

or Pisumsativum for several years and performed rigorous experiments
involving huge data, sampling of plants, mathematical verification etc. He
conducted several crosses and reached certain conclusions which we now call
‘Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance’.
The garden pea plant is self-pollinating in Nature which always amounts to
generation of pure or homozygous traits. Mendel thought of cross pollinating
the plants and find out what happens. For this purpose he used the pollen of a
particular plant and dusted it on to the stigma of another flower of another
pea plant. He conducted monohybrid and dihybrid crosses. The former
involves the study of one character at a time, while the latter involves study of
two characters at a time.

Mendel used a number of contrasting visible traits of garden peas-

round/wrinkled seeds, tall/short plants, white/violet flowers etc produced
progeny from them and calculated percentages of tall and short progeny.
(These traits were strictly contrasting which means that there were no
intermediate forms in between. So a pea plant could be either tall or dwarf and
not taller, slightly more tall etc.)

After conducting the monohybrid cross for first and second generations (as in
book and as discussed in class) Mendel found that a trait like tallness appeared
in the first generation. Dwarfness did not appear in the first generation but
reappeared in the second generation. Mendel concluded that:
  Each trait is controlled by a FACTOR (now called gene).
 Each factor has two forms or COPIES (now called alleles). In other
words, factors occur in pairs.
 In a dissimilar pair of factors one member of the pair dominates the
other. The one that expresses itself and is called dominant factor while
other remains unexpressed and is called recessive factor. So T is
dominant over t.
These postulates form what is known as LAW OF DOMINANCE.
The second law is- LAW OF SEGREGATION which states:
 The paired condition of factors is broken at the time of gamete formation,.
Each gamete gets only one copy of the factor of that character, either T or
t.
 Paired condition is restored after fertilization. Any male gamete can fuse
with any female gamete.

The Dihybrid Cross

Mendel next studied the inheritance of two traits at a time, for example
seed shape and colour. The former could be round or wrinkled while the
latter was green or yellow. He had found that round is dominant over
wrinkled and yellow is dominant over green. He crossed pure green round
parents with pure wrinkled yellow parents to obtain the first generation of
all round yellow plants. These plants were then selfed and the following
result was obtained:

Figure showing Independent inheritance of two separate traits, shape and

colour of seeds.

Phenotypic ratio for MENDELIAN Dihybrid cross is 9:3:3:1

The third Law-The Law of Independence Assortment: The segregation of a
pair of alleles during meiosis occurs independently of other pairs of alleles
which are located on different chromosomes. In other words inheritance of
one trait is independent of another.

How do these traits get expressed?

Cellular DNA is the information source for making proteins in the cell.
A section of DNA that provides information for one protein is called the gene
for that protein.

Example: The height of plant depend on the amount of particular plant

hormone.
* The plant hormone depends on the efficiency of making it and also the
enzyme involved in the process.
* If the enzyme works efficiently, more hormone is made and the plant
becomes tall.
If the enzyme is less efficient, less hormone is made and the plant becomes
short.

Ques. How is equal contribution of male and female gametes ensured in the
progeny?
Sexual reproduction involves fusion of gametes. The gametes are produced by
meiosis during which the chromosome number is reduced to half. So each
gamete contains only one set of genes or chromosomes. When the male and
female gametes fuse the ‘two set condition’ is restored in the zygote. Out of
the two sets of chromosomes, one set is contributed by the male gamete and
the other by the female gamete. Hence, both gametes contribute equally to
the zygote or the progeny.

The following account for inheritance of blood groups is only for reference:
A,B,O Blood groups are controlled by a number of alleles. These alleles are
called A, B and O. The O allele is recessive to both A and B, where these two
occur with O in a heterozygous. When alleles A and B are present in
heterozygous state with each other, the blood type is AB as these alleles exist
as Co-dominants. Neither allele A nor B is dominant over each other.
I represents the basic symbol for blood groups and 3 alleles are represented as
IA , IB and i.

(a) Parents IA i X IB i
(Group A) (Group B)

Gametes IA, i X IB, i

Children IA IB, i IB ; IAi, ii

(b) Parents ii X ii

Gametes only itype

Children only ii

A child with blood group A is produced only if at least one parent has this blood
group. Same is true for blood group B.
Parents with blood type A and B can produce children with blood groups O, A,
B and AB. O group parents can produce only with the blood type O.

 A man with blood group A has a wife with blood group B. They have a
child with O blood group. Give the genotype of all the three. What
other blood groups can be expected in the future offspring of this
couple?
Blood group A (man) X Blood group (wife)

Child with blood group O

Genotype of the child with O blood group ---------ii

Genotype of the father with A blood group --------Ai
Genotype of the mother with B blood group -------Bi

Ai X Bi

A i B i
Genotypes AB Ai Bi ii
Expected blood AB A B O
groups

SEX DETERMINATION
Determination of sex depends on the following factors:
1. Some rely entirely on environmental cues, for example: In some
animals the temperature at which fertilized eggs are kept.
2. In other animals such as snails, individuals can change sex, indicating
that is not genetically determined.
3. In humans, the sex of the largely genetically determined.

Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes in their cells.

Out of these, 22 pairs are autosomes and one pair is called sex chromosomes
as they play a role in sex determination.Women have a perfect pair of sex
chromosome-XX. Men have a mismatched pair- one is normal sized X while the
other is short one called Y.

Sex of children will be determined by what they inherit from their father. A
child who inherits an X chromosome from the father will be a girl, and the one
who inherits a Y chromosome will be a boy.