Mendel on Patterns of Inheritance

Mendel on Patterns of Inheritance

Gregor Mendel used pea plants, Pisum sativum, for his experiments. He chose the pea because it is an organism that can be easily manipulated in breeding experiments. Pea plants come in many distinct strains and varieties. Mendel knew that he would be about to easily observe and document the pea plant and the changes and differences. He also that the seven traits would be simple to keep track of with the pea plant. He started by developing true-breeding varieties for the seven traits individually. When they bred among themselves, all of the offspring of a given variety were identical to the parent for that trait. We look at hereditary factors in mostly the same ways as Mendel. Gene is now used to describe heredity information that determines a single trait. Traits that were seen more often were called dominant traits where recessive traits were seen less often. These were two of his discoveries. Another discovery was that although two plants may look alike, one could be dominant and the other hybrid. Every gene has two shots at a trait, two alleles. Mendel also discovered that when organisms reproduce sexually, both parents produce reproductive cells. Many studies and experiments have taken place since Mendel's work. In the past few years, scientists were studying synthetic lethal genes. Scientists studying the fruit fly observed that combinations of some mutant alleles were not viable, whereas singly, the same mutant alleles did not cause death.Some mutations are only lethal when paired with a second mutation which are known as synthetic lethal genes. When an allele causes lethality, this is evidence that the gene must have a critical function in an organism. Mendel's discoveries will always be important to scientists and will be relevant in some way forever. They may tweak things as they change with time, but his research will be the basis of a lot of experiments for many years to come.