Running head: MENDEL ON PATTERNS OF INHERITANCE 1

Mendel on Patterns of Inheritance

Tiffany Nicole Cooper

University of Phoenix

SCI

230

Luciana Robinson

January 19, 2011

 Mendel on Patterns of Inheritance

The scientist that worked on the question of inheritance before Gregor Mendel, seemed to

work on many traits at once, but Mendel was one that decided to work on only or a few traits at a

time. This allowed him to better document his findings. Since Mendel was more focused on one

or a few traits at a time, it allowed to him to be “simpler” in his questioning. For example; while

the other scientist were studying all of the different traits from the DNA strand, Mendel would

only look at a few at the most at a time. This allowed him to better conduct research that he

could test and address more simply.

There were several factors that contributed to Mr. Gregor Mendel’s success. He used

mathematical analysis in his studies. He could arrange mating between individuals that would

differ in easily recognizable traits (like seed shapes and flower color). He chose an appropriate

model organism to study (the pea plant). He could control which parents were involved in a

mating. Like it was mentioned before, Mendel was not the first scientist interested in studying

the basic mechanisms of heredity, these factors only made him successful because of his

conclusions, whereas others before him failed.

Mendel experimented on a bunch of different pea plants in 1856 when the science was on

its initial stage of development. When he did this experiment meiosis and DNA were unknown to

scientists. As the basics laws of hybridization were not properly understood, Mendel put forward

certain hypothesis followed by testing of that hypothesis. He reasoned that each plant received

two of these hereditary elements, one from each parent. He concluded that the hereditary

elements must either be dominant or recessive and that the dominant elements would be the traits

that are seen.

Mendel had six major concluding principals that he had hypostasized from his work.
Three of them are; dominance, segregation, and independence. Some genes show dominance,

heterozygous individuals can only show only one allele; the dominant one. The recessive alleles

have to stay hidden in the genes. When it comes to “segregation” the Punnett square is a tool that

illustrates the law of segregation. The law of segregation that Mendel came up with, states that

heterozygous parents are equally capable of passing alone either of their two alleles on to their

offspring. The law of independence that Mendel talked of “only applies when two or more genes

are considered simultaneously. It says that the alleles of one gene are passed to an offspring

independently of the alleles for other genes.” (Pruitt, N. L., & Underwood, L. S. 2006). The

Punnett square also illustrates this law.

 Reference Page:

Pruitt, N. L., & Underwood, L. S. (2006). Bioinquiry: Making connections in biology (3rd ed.).
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.