Gregor Mendel
“Visible Proofs”/Portrait of Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel was born July 22, 1822, and died on January 6, 1884. He was a German speaking Silesian scientists, and an Augustinian friar who founded the new science of genetics. He was born in Hyncice, Czechoslovakia. His father was a peasant an his grandfather was a gardener. Mendel live in a monastery in Brno. He was in charge of the garden at the monastery. He became a priest in 1847. He then studied at the University of Vienna, where he studied physics, chemistry, botany and physics. When he returned to the monastery after completing school, he took a job as a teacher of the natural sciences at the Technical School at Brno. In 1868, Mendel was elected abbot of the monastery and Vice President of the Natural Science Society (Hall, 1999).
Mendel liked to conduct experiments in his free time. Through experimentation in pea plants, he discovered that the inheritance of certain traits follow a particular pattern. He studied seven traits in the pea plants; seed shape, flower color, seed coat tint, pod shape, unripe pod color, flower location, and plant height (O’Neill 2013). He tested on over 29,000 pea plants. Through his studies, he found that one in four pea plants had purebred recessive genes two out of four were hybrid, and one out of four were purebred dominant. These discoveries led to the Law of Segregation, the Law of Independent Assortment, and the Law of Dominance. The Law of Segregation states that every individual possesses a pair of genes for any particular trait. These genes are passed randomly from the parent to the offspring. Interactions between these two genes in the offspring are referred to as dominance, and this influences how the offspring expresses that trait. An example one of these traits could be the height of a plant or the color of an animal’s fur. The Law of Independent Assortment states that separate genes for separate traits are passed independently of one another from parent to offspring. Therefore, the inheritance of one trait in an offspring has nothing to do with the inheritance of another trait. This means, for example, that there is no correlation between the height of a plant and its color. The Law of Dominance states that recessive genes will always be masked by dominant genes. The dominant gene will always be the one expressed in the trait of the offspring. These three laws make up the Law of Mendelian Inheritance (Miko, 2008).
“Mendelian Inheritance”/Chart of Mendel’s Law of Inheritance
This chart depicts Mendel’s genetics theory using color as an example. In the picture, “r” represents the color red, and “w” represents the color white. The chart shows how the color gene is passed from parent to offspring.
“White Pea Flower”/Photograph of pea plant used in Mendel’s experiments
Mendel’s work went unrecognized by the scientific community until after he died. During his lifetime, most biologists believed that all characteristics were passed to the next generation through blending inheritance, meaning that the traits from each parent were averaged together. By 1900, three other scientists; Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich von Tschermak; all separately rediscovered Mendel’s work and used it to understand their own findings in genetics. They published their findings rediscovering Mendel’s work within a two month span in 1900. Mendel’s theories were widely accepted and researched by many other biologists, but it faced some controversy at first. Biometricians opposed it using statistical and mathematical research. However, Mendelians claimed a better understanding of biology. In the end, the combination of Mendelian genetics with Darwin’s theory of natural selection resulted modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (Miko 2008). The modern synthesis in the 20th century brought together several biological specialties that provide evidence for evolution. The synthesis showed that Mendelian genetics was consistent with natural selection and gradual evolution. This synthesis is still current in evolutionary biology (Rhee 2009).
Works Cited
Websites:
Hall, Mandy. “Johann Gregor Mendel.” Psychology History. Psychology Department, 1999. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
Miko , Ilona . “Scitable .” Nature Education. Nature Publishing Group, 2008, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2014. <http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gregor-mendel-and-the-principles-of-inheritance-593>.
O’neill , Denis . “Basic Principles of Genetics: Mendel’s Genetics.” Basic Principles of Genetics: Mendel’s Genetics. N.p., 2013, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_1.htm>.
Rhee, Seung Yon. “Gregor Mendel (1822-1884).” The National Health Museum . Acess Excellence , 2009, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/BC/Gregor_Mendel.php>.
Photographs:
Efekt, Net. “White Pea Flower.” Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Manske, Mangus. “Mendelian Inheritance.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2014. GNU Free Documentation license.
“Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Galleries: Technologies: Key accomplishments: DNA.” U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Mar. 2014. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.<http://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/technologies/dna.html>. Public Domain Image.
Allie Wier