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Heredity and Genetics
Heredity and Genetics
Heredity and Genetics
Father of Genetics
St Thomas's Abbey
Garden Pea Plant
(Pisum satovum)
Mendel experimented with
thousands of pea plants to
understand the process of
heredity – the passing down of
traits through generations.
Genetics is the scientific study of
heredity.
Gregor Mendel
While working in his garden, Mendel
wondered why different pea plants grew
tall, while others were short.
Some had green seeds, others yellow.
He called all these characteristics traits.
Why did Mendel used Pea Plants
1st Reason: Garden peas easily grow and produce large
numbers of offspring.
100% PURPLE
Or 4 PURPLE or
4:0 PURPLE PLANT
3rd Step: The crossing of the F1
Generation.
Wrinkled Round
Smooth Pinched
Mendel’s Experiments
When the egg and pollen (sperm) cells join, this is called
fertilization.
Pea plants are usually self-pollinating – meaning they can
pollinate themselves, even when they are alone.
Mendel developed a method to cross-pollinate – meaning
he moved the pollen from one plant to the pistil of
another. This is called “cross pollination” or “crossed” for
short.
In Mendel’s experiments, the F1 generation are also
called hybrids because they resulted from a cross
between two pure-breeding plants with contrasting
traits (for example, pea plants with round seeds
crossed with pea plants with wrinkled seeds).
• Based on the results of his experiments,
Mendel hypothesized that there was a
factor in the plants which controlled the
appearance of a trait. These factors are
what we call genes today.
MENDELIAN
PRINCIPLES OF
GENETICS
The Law of Complete
Dominance
Principle of Allelelism
The Law of Segregation and
Recombination
The Law of Complete Dominance
When a pure breeding parent carrying a “Stronger”
characteristics is crossed or bred with another pure
breeding parent carrying a “weaker” characteristic,
their offspring will carry or manifest the “Stronger”
characteristic possessed by one parent.
PP pp
P P p p
Dominant trait: Signified by capital letter-
E.g. (P). If the traits you are using are dominant,
this trait will "overpower" the recessive trait and
will be expressed. E.g. Pp
P P
PARENT
S’
GAMETE
S