Republic of the Philippines

Batangas State University

BatStateU – Alangilan
Alangilan, Batangas City

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Introduction to Genetics
(The Continuity of Life)

Heredity and Environment

Two great influences, acting together all through your life, have made you what you are at this moment. These
influences are heredity and environment. Heredity is the passing on traits from parents to offspring. The
environment is all the outside forces that act on an organism.

It is genes that code the traits passed on from parents to offspring. The branch of biology that deals with heredity
are called genetics.

What kind of traits are inherited?

All members of a species are alike. That is, they all carry the genes for certain traits. Such traits are called species
traits. For example, the ability to walk erect is a species trait of human beings.

Inherited individual traits make one different from the other. For example, hair and eye color, body build, etc.

Gregor Mendel- Pioneer of Genetics

Flower is the reproductive structure of plants. Each flower of a pea plants contains several stamens. These
structures produce pollen grains, which form sperm nuclei. Each pea plant flower has a structure called pistil
which contains egg cells at its base. The transfer of pollen from stamens to pistil results in fertilization. This process
is called pollination.

Pea plants normally carry-on self-pollination. That is, pollen is transferred from stamens to pistil on the same
flower or on flowers of the same plant.
 Republic of the Philippines
Batangas State University
BatStateU – Alangilan
Alangilan, Batangas City

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

But Mendel’s experiment also involved cross-pollination. In this process, pollen is transferred from one plant to
the flowers of a different plant. Thus, eggs and sperm come from different plants.
 Republic of the Philippines
Batangas State University
BatStateU – Alangilan
Alangilan, Batangas City

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Mendel’s Experiments and Results

SELF-POLLINATION RESULTS:
1. Seeds from tall plants always produced tall plants.
2. Yellow seeds always produced plants that developed yellow seeds.
Therefore, the traits of the parent plant were always passed on to its offspring.

CROSS-POLLINATION (CONTRASTING TRAITS) RESULTS:

1. FIRST, he transferred pollen from TALL PLANTS to the pistil of SHORT PLANTS. He then planted the seeds that
matured on the pistils.

QUESTION: Would the offspring be tall, short, or somewhere in between?

ANSWER: The seeds produced ONLY tall plants.

QUESTION: What about when Mendel transferred pollen from short plants to tall ones?
ANSWER: All offspring were tall.

2. Mendel experimented, with other contrasting traits. In each case, he crossed plants that differed only in one
trait. And in each case, only one trait of a pair showed up in the offspring. For example, PLANTS WITH THE
TRAIT OF YELLOW SEEDS WERE CROSSED WITH PLANTS THAT HAD TRAIT OF GREEN SEEDS. The seeds that
developed were yellow, and they produced also plants with yellow seeds.
FINDINGS: All seven crosses had the same kind of result. ONLY ONE TRAIT of a pair would appear in the first
generation of offspring. The other trait seemed to be lost.

Mendel represented the parent plants used in the first cross as P1. He referred to the offspring of such cross
as the first filial, or F1, generation.

For example, the tall and short plants crossed by Mendel were P1. Their offspring, all tall, was F1. Self-
pollination of these F1 plants would produce a second filial, or F2 generation.

QUESTION: What would such an F2 generation be like? Would all offspring still be tall?
ANSWER: Three-fourths of F2 plants were tall, but one fourth were short.

QUESTION: What did Mendel do after finding this result?

ANSWER: He tested the F1 plants from the other six crosses in the same way.
RESULT: In each case, the “lost” trait showed up again in about one-fourth of F2 plants.
 Republic of the Philippines
Batangas State University
BatStateU – Alangilan
Alangilan, Batangas City

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

MENDEL’S HYPOTHESES: BASIC PRINCIPLES OF GENETICS

What were Mendel’s three hypotheses?
How did he arrive at them?

Follow his logic in terms of the traits of tall and short. But the same logic will be applied to other traits as well.

Findings Hypothesis
Tall plants crossed with short plants produced an F1
generation of tall plants.

But short plants appeared again in the F2 generation.

This concept states that inherited traits are controlled
Thus, some influence within the plants must control by factors (genes) that occur in pairs.
height (Mendel called such influences factors, today
we call them genes). Further, since plants were either
tall or short, a pair of factors must be involved.

The tall F1 plants must contain factor for their tallness. Principle of Dominance and Recessiveness
But they may also contain a factor for shortness, since One factor (gene) in a pair mask the other or prevent
short plants appeared among F2 offspring. it from having effect.

QUESTION: Why there were no F1 plants short?
ANSWER: Second Hypothesis
Some traits such as tallness always appeared in
crosses between parents with contrasting traits.
Mendel called these traits dominant. Other traits
such as shortness did not appear, in the F1
generation, though they appeared in the F2
generation plants. Mendel called these traits
recessive.

In Mendel’s crosses, one parent was pure tall. This

plant has genes for tallness. The other was pure short,
having both genes for shortness. Members of the F1
generation were hybrid.

Hybrid- a term used for offspring of two parents that

differ in one or more traits

Gamete contains only one gene of a pair. The other Law of Segregation (Mendel’s First Law)
genes go to another gamete. It states that a pair of factors (genes) is segregated or
separated forming gametes.

Law of Independent Assortment- When the gene pairs on a given pair of chromosomes are separated, they are
distributed to a gamete completely independently of the way other gene pairs on the other chromosomes are distributed.

SOME GENETICS TERMS:

Genotype- show the genes that are present in TT- tall plants
the organism’s body cell. tt- short plants
 Republic of the Philippines
Batangas State University
BatStateU – Alangilan
Alangilan, Batangas City

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Phenotype- effect on the organisms by the Hybrid tall pea plant

genes Genotype: TT
Phenotype: tall
Homozygous- when paired genes are identical TT
tt
Heterozygous- when paired genes are not Tt
identical
Alleles- different forms of genes that have Gene pair: Tt
contrasting effects on a trait T is an allele of t, and t is an allele of T
Gene pair: Yy
Y is an allele of y, and y is an allele of Y
BUT T IS NOT AN ALLELE OF Y and so on
 Republic of the Philippines
Batangas State University
BatStateU – Alangilan
Alangilan, Batangas City

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ARTS

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

_________________________________________ End of the Module _________________________________

Prepared by:

Maria Fatima D. De Torres, LPT

Guest Lecturer I