Mendel

’s Theories Essay, Research Paper

Gregor Mendel played a huge role in the underlying principles of genetic

inheritance. He grew up in a Augustinian brotherhood where he learned

agricultural training with basic education. He then went on to the Olmutz

Philisophical Institute and then entered the Augustinian Monestary in 1843.

After 3 years of theological studies, Mendel went to the University of Vienna

where he was influenced by 2 professors, the physicist Doppler and a botanist

named Unger. Here he learned to study science through experimentation and

aroused his interest in the causes of variation in plants. Then in 1857, Mendel

began breeding garden peas in the abbey garen to study inheritance which

lead to his law of Segregation and independent assortment.

Mendel’s Law of Segregation stated that the members of a paror of

homologous chromosomes segregate during meiosis and are distributed to

different gametes. This hypothesis can be divided into four main ideas. The

first idea is that alternative versions of genes account for variations in

inherited characters. Different alleles will create different variations in

inherited characters. The sescond idea is that for each character, an organism

inherits two genes, one form each parent. So this means that a homolohous

loci may have matching alleles, as in the true-breeding plants of Mendel’s P

generation(parental). If the alleles differ, then there will be F hybrids. The

third idea states that if the two alleles differ, the receessive allele will have no

affect on the organism’s appearance. So a F hybrid plant that has purple

flowers, the dominant allele will be the purple-color allele and the recessive

allele would be the white-color allele. The idea is that the two genes for each

character segregate during gamete production.

Independent assortment states that each member of a paor of

homologous chromosome segregates during meiosis independently of the

members of other pairs, so that alleles carried on diffenret chromosomes are

different distributed randomly to the gametes.

In conclusion, Mendel’s work was very inportant to the science

community and to this day are being studied.