GREGOR JOHANN MENDEL

Submitted by,
Deepthi K Thomas
Natural science
Roll no:23
 Early Life

 Johann Gregor Mendel was a Moravian.

 Born in 1822 in Hyncice , Czechoslovakia on July 22nd.
 His father was a peasant and his grandfather was a gardener.
 Mendel was initially taught by a local priest but later on he was
admitted in an institute of philosophy in Olmutz .
 He is the founder of Modern science of Genetics.
 Life and career
 Mendel was born into a German speaking family in Hyncice .
 Mendel discovered the basic principles of inheritance through
experiments on garden pea plants for 7 years.
 The inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular
patterns, subsequently becoming the foundation of modern
genetics and leading to the study of heredity.
Experiments carried out by Gregor Mendel
He formulated the principles of inheritance by carrying out
experiments with garden peas.

 Mendel choose garden peas because :

 They were easy to grow.
 Produced new generations quickly.
 Peas had easily distinguishable characteristics.
 Was able to strictly control the breeding patterns of his peas.
Mendel examined the following seven
characteristics found in pea plants.
 Flower colour _ Purple or White
 Flower position _ Axial or Terminal
 Seed colour _ Yellow or Green
 Seed shape _ Round or Wrinkled
 Pod shape _ Inflated or Constricted
 Pod colour _ Green or Yellow
 Stem height _ Tall or Short
Mendel’s Experiments
 Mendel’s Laws

Mendel formulated 3 principles of Genetics with his results of his

experiments.
They are:
 The Law of Dominance.
 The Law of Segregation.
 The Law of Independent Assortment.
 Law of Dominance

In a cross of parents that are pure for contrasting traits,

only one form of the trait will appear in the next
generation. Offspring that are hybrid for a trait will have
only the dominant trait in the phenotype .
Example: When pure tall (TT) plants crossed with pure short (tt) pea
plants, all new pea plants were tall (Tt) in F1 generation. The same was
true for other pea traits.

Therefore it is observed that when there is a dominant traits present in a

genotype , the phenotype is affected by the dominant allele & not by
the recessive one.
In the p – square of cross between 2 hybrids, 3 of the 4 boxes will
produce an organism with the dominant trait – “TT”, “Tt”, & “Tt”.
1 of the 4, producing an organism with homozygous recessive
phenotype – “tt”.
 Law of Segregation
During the formation of gametes ( eggs or sperm ), the two
alleles responsible for a trait separate from each other.
Alleles for a trait are then “ recombined “ at fertilization ,
producing the genotype for the traits of the offspring.
In p-square, the alleles of parental pairs segregate or separate from
each other and only one allele is transmitted to a gamate during
fertilization.
In real life this happens during a process of cell division called
“MEIOSIS”. Meiosis leads to the production of gametes (sex cells),
which are either eggs or sperm.
 Law of Independent Assortment
In a dihybrid cross, when two pairs of traits are combined in
a hybrid, segregation of one pair of characters is
independent of the other pair of characters.
 Mendel noticed during all his work that the height of the plant
and the shape of the seeds and the colour of the pods had no
impact on one another .
 The different traits do not influence the inheritance of each other.
They are inherited INDEPENDENTLY.
 The genotype of the parent pea plants will be :
RrYy X RrYy
Where,
“R” = dominant allele for round seeds
“r” = recessive allele for wrinkled seeds
“Y”= dominant allele for Yellow seeds
“y” = recessive allele for green seeds
Phenotypic ratio- 9:3:3:1
Genotypic ratio – 1:2:1:2:4:2:1:2:1
 Reasons for Mendel’s success
Mendel was successful because :
 He used peas, which were easily grown.
 Peas produced successive generations rapidly.
 He selected easily observable characteristics.
 Strictly controlled the fertilization process.
 He used mathematics rigorously to analyse his results used in
large numbers of plants .
 He studied traits that had two easily identified factors.
 He maintained an accurate record of all the observations
 Conclusion

 Gregor Mendel’s principles of inheritance from the cornerstone of

modern genetics.

 Through his work on pea plants, discovered the fundamental laws

of inheritance

 Mendel tracked the segregation of parental genes and their

appearance in the offspring as dominant or recessive traits.