MENDELIAN
GENETICS
Ilos : By the end of this section, you will be able
to:
Describe the expected outcomes of monohybrid crosses involving dominant
Describe
and recessive alleles.
Describe Describe the three principles of inheritance.
Explain Explain the relationship between phenotype and genotype.
Develop a Punnett square to calculate the expected proportions of
Develop
genotypes and phenotypes in a monohybrid cross.
Explain Explain the purpose and methods of a test cross.
Introduction
Genetics: is the study of heredity.
Johann Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) set the framework
for genetics long before chromosomes or genes .
Because of Mendel’s work, the fundamental principles of
heredity were revealed.
Today, the postulates put by Mendel form the
basis of classical, or Mendelian, genetics.
Not all genes are transmitted from parents to
offspring according to Mendelian genetics.
Mendel’s experiments serve as an excellent
starting point for thinking about inheritance
Mendel’s
Experiments
• In 1865, M endel presented the results o f his
experiments with nearly 30,000 pea plants t o
the local Natural History So ciety.
• He demonstrated that traits are transmitted
from parents to o ffspring independently o f
other traits and in dominant and recessive
patterns.
• In 1866, he published his work,
Experiments in Plant Hybridization.
Garden Pea Characteristics Revealed the Basics of Heredity
Trait: is defined as a The characteristics include:
variation in the tall vs. short plant height,
physical appearance wrinkled vs. round seeds,
of a heritable
characteristic. green vs. yellow seeds,
violet vs. white flowers, etc.
able 18.1 The Results of Mendel’s Garden Pea
Hybridizations
Characteristi Contrasting F1 Offspring F2 Offspring F2 Trait
c P0 Traits Traits Traits Ratios
100 percent 705 violet
Flower color Violet vs. white 3.15:1
violet 224 white
Flower 100 percent 651 axial
Axial vs. terminal 3.14:1
position axial 207 terminal
787 tall
Plant height Tall vs. dwarf 100 percent tall 2.84:1
277 dwarf
100 percent 5,474 round
Seed texture Round vs. wrinkled 2.96:1
round 1,850 wrinkled
100 percent 6,022 yellow
Seed color Yellow vs. green 3.01:1
yellow 2,001 green
882 inflated
Pea pod Inflated vs. 100 percent
299 2.95:1
texture constricted inflated
constricted
Pea pod 100 percent 428 green
Green vs. yellow 2.82:1
color green 152 yellow
Mendel’s Principles of Inheritance
Mendel generalized the results of his pea -plant
experiments into three principles that describe the
basis of inheritance in diploid organisms.
They are:
• principle of segregation
• principle of dominance
• principle of independent assortment.
The Principle of Segregation
principle of segregation, states that
individuals have two copies of each
trait, and that each parent transmits
one of its two copies to its offspring.
Dif ferent versions of genes are called alleles.
Diploid organisms that have two identical alleles of a gene on
their two homologous chromosomes are homozygous for that trait.
Diploid organisms that have two dif ferent alleles of a gene on
their two homologous chromosomes are heterozygous for that
trait.
The Principle of Dominance
• In a heterozygote, only the dominant allele will be expressed.
• The recessive allele will remain “latent” but will be transmitted to of fspring.
• The recessive trait will only be expressed by of fspring that have two copies
of this allele
• Individuals with a dominant trait could have either????or ???
• Two dominant versions of the trait or one dominant and one recessive
version of the trait. (give examples)
• Individuals with a recessive trait have two recessive alleles.(give examples)
Dominant Traits Recessive
Traits
Achondroplasia Albinism
Examples of
Brachydactyly Cystic fibrosis dominant and
Huntington’s Duchenne muscular recessive traits
disease dystrophy
in humans.
Marfan syndrome Galactosemia
Neurofibromatosi
Phenylketonuria
s
Widow’s peak Sickle-cell anemia
Wooly hair Tay-Sachs disease
Punnett Squares for
Monohybrid Crosses
Can be used to predict the possible outcomes of
a genetic cross or mating and their expected
frequencies.
It was devised by the British geneticist Reginald
Punnett
Test Cross to
Determine Genotype
Test cross: is a way to
determine whether an organism
that expressed a dominant trait
was a heterozygote or a
homozygote.
Pedigrees to Study Inheritance
Patterns
Used in human diseases which are inherited genetically.
A healthy person in a family in which some members suffer from
a recessive genetic disorder may want to know if he or she has
the disease-causing gene and what risk exists of passing the
disorder on to his or her offspring..
Of course, doing a test cross in humans is
unethical and impractical. Instead,
geneticists use pedigree analysis to study
the inheritance pattern of human genetic
diseases
How to use a Pedigree
• Each row of a pedigree represents one generation of the
family. Women are represented by circles
• males by squares.
• People who had children together are connected with a
horizontal line
• Their children are connected to this line with a vertical line.
.
Pedigree of a human family with the
recessive genetic disease alkaptonuria.
