Mendel’s Laws of Heredity

Gregor Mendel
Background Info
By the 1890's, the invention of better
microscopes allowed biologists to discover the
basic facts of cell division and sexual
reproduction. The focus of genetics research
then shifted to understanding what really
happens in the transmission of hereditary traits
from parents to children. A number of
hypotheses were suggested to explain heredity,
but Gregor Mendel , a little known Central
European monk, was the only one who got it
more or less right. His ideas had been
published in 1866 but largely went
unrecognized until 1900, which was long after
his death. His early adult life was spent in
relative obscurity doing basic genetics research
and teaching high school mathematics, physics,
and Greek in Brno (now in the Czech Republic).
In his later years, he became the abbot of his
monastery and put aside his scientific work.
7 Traits studied by Mendel
Parts of a Flower

The Female Parts of a Flower

The Male Parts of a

Flower
Fertilization in Plants
Self-Pollination: male & female gametes come from the same
plant
Cross Pollination: male & female gametes come from different
plants
 Mendel’s Crosses
Purebred: an organism that
always produces offspring with
the same trait
Hybrid: offspring of parents that
have different forms (alleles) of a
trait
Mendel’s Conclusions
• The Rule of Unit factors: each organism has 2
factors (alleles) that control each of its trait.
• The Rule of Dominance: The dominant allele
expresses itself over the recessive allele. The
recessive allele only expresses itself when 2
copies of the allele are present
• The law of segregation: when gametes are
produced, each gamete receives one of the 2
alleles
Rule of Unit Factors
• Homologous Pairs
▫ The pairs of
chromosomes that have
the same genes on them
but not necessarily the
same allele
▫ One comes from your
mother and one comes
from your father; that’s
why you have physical
traits from BOTH parents
The Rule of Dominance
 Law of Segregation

Homologous
Pair

Sister
Chromatids

Only one allele from each parent ends up in each sex

cell.
Phenotype vs. Genotype
• Genotype: the combination of alleles an
organism has (TT, Tt, tt…)
▫ Homozygous: if the 2 alleles for a trait are the
same
 Homozygous dominant (TT)
 Homozygous recessive (tt)
▫ Heterozygous: if the 2 alleles for a trait are
different (Tt)
• Phenotype: the actual characteristic (tall, short,
….)
Punnett Square: used to
determine the expected
proportions of possible
genotypes of the
offspring
Punnett Square (Practice)