Dented Peas

The basis of genetics were established by Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk in the mid to late 1800’s. Through the observations from cross-pollinating pea plants, Mendel was able to discover the basic laws of inheritance. Mendel’s experiment was to cross pollinate pea plants and observe how traits were passed on. He started his experiment with two true breeding pods,

He was the second of three children. As a child he worked in the garden and studied beekeeping. As he grew, his love for the garden did to. He received his early schooling in his own small village but had to be sent to a nearby town to get his secondary schooling (High School). After that he went to the University of Olomouc where he studied philosophy and physics. When he was done with collage he became fascinated in genetics. His most famous experiment was one he did with peas. He would plant and replant a the peas and record the differences between them. From that he recorded that very rarely there was a slight change between some of the plants; he also noticed that the changes grew increasingly in numbers. He had discovered the law of inheritance witch means that genes are passed on by the

Gregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian biologist whose work on heredity became the modern theory of genetics. Mendel was born on July 22, 1822. Born into a poor farming family and it was difficult for poor families to obtain a good education and Johann Mendel saw the only way to escape a life of poverty was to enter the monastery. Where he was changed his name to Gregor Mendel. This monastery was the Augustinian Order of St Thomas, a teaching order with a reputation as a center of learning and scientific enquiry.

Firstly, the seeds and beads were prepared. For the Respirometer 1, 25 ml of water was put in a 50 ml graduated tube. Then 25 germinating peas were dropped into the graduated cylinder. In doing this the volume of the water went up to 29.5 ml. By subtracting the two volumes, the volume of the germinating peas were found it equalled 4.5 ml (29.5-25=4.5).

Gregor Johann Mendel was an abbot at the St. Thomas’ Abbey in Brno, in the modern day Czech Republic. He is credited as being the father of genetics because of his work crossbreeding pea plants in order to favor certain traits such as height, color, and pod shape. He worked in the late 1850’s to the early 1860’s. Even though farmers had been doing this similar practice for centuries, his experiments established many of the heredity rules we now refer to as Mendelian inheritance. Around this time another theory of genes was coming out from a man by the name of Sir Francis Galton. Galton is credited as the “Father of Eugenics” and is also known for the popular phrase “Nature vs Nurture”. Galton studied the upper class in Great Britain and believed came to the conclusion of their “superior genetic makeup” was

In conclusion Mendel helped scientist understand how genes are passed down throughout generations, how they are separated, and how they are dominant or recessive. He has helped the science world tremendously and he has made it so that it is easier for scientist to be able to help people now that have a type of disorder because of the genes that they

31. What might have caused Gregor Mendel NOT to conclude that biological inheritance is determined by factors

Gregor Johann Mendel, the father of genetics, was born in 1822. He was a priest and scientist who became famous for his work and studies on the inheritance patterns using pea plants. Gregor Mendel used pea plants known as Pisumsativum in his research where he developed two fundamental laws of genetics known today as the “Law of segregation”, and the “Law of independent assortment” (Hartl, 1992). The “Law of segregation” states that when an individual produces a gamete, the copies of a given gene separate in which each gamete receives only one copy of that gene. The phenotypic ratio in the F2 generation according to the “Law of

Mendel’s work made him recognized in the scientific community. This didn’t happen though until after his death. His work on pea plants brought him to his discovery of heredity, which earned him the title of “father of modern genetics”. The three laws he discovered were the Law of Segregation, Law of Dominance, and Law Of Independent Assortment.

2. The idea was called blending inheritance. Gregor Mendel and other scientist as well, discovered that traits were inherited whole, and not blended. This discovery also led to the law of inheritance, which basically talked about traits. The law of inheritance explained that a trait might reappear if it once disappear in further generations. And since Darwin failed to provide an explanation for how traits could be maintained over subsequent generations, it gave an open for other scientist as well to make their own discoveries.

All seeds were exposed to the same amount of temperature and light as they were all kept in the same location at the same times

Mendel was able to figure out that traits came in discrete units because he was breeding plants to see how the offspring would come out. He did this experiment to find evidence to support the idea that particles were not blended. He found that when he cross bred the white and red flowers, they came out red and white instead of a shade of pink like expected. Mendel realized that the particles inherited were not blended and that made them discrete units. An example of this would be if traits that we inherit from our parents do not appear in us, then these traits will appear in the next generation we have.

In order for The Human Genome Project to exist, the background of genetics must be known, for the discoveries made in the field would be what eventually led the project itself. Genetics in itself is a fairly new concept, which officially began in 1865 in central Europe. A monk named Gregor Mendel learned about heredity and inheritance through breeding pea plants. After retiring from his teaching and scientific life, he became the abbot of his church. Unfortunately, the importance of his discovery was

3. Carlson, Elof Axel. Mendel's Legacy: The Origin of Classical Genetics. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2004. Print

He reasoned that there were certain rules by which these characteristics were inherited. He guessed that each plant must possess some sort of unit that specified its characteristics. In fact, each must have two units, one from each parent plant. If the plant inherited two different units, then one would override the other. This was called the dominant unit, and the one that was overridden was called the recessive unit. Mendel's theories were not discovered till 1900, and it began the science called genetics , the study of a physical inheritance. From this name, Mendel's units were changed into genes.