The Legacy

of Mendel
• Breeding and testing about 5,000 pea plants, Mendel
was able to come up with crucial generalizations that
were later on used as founding principles of the
Mendelian Inheritance or Mendel's Principles of
Heredity.
• His generalizations are often called Mendelian
Postulates, which are sets of genetic laws and rules
that explain the factors affecting heredity.
• The so-called “Mendel's laws of inheritance” came
about based on the set of principles of Gregor Mendel.

These laws are the:

 Law of Unit Characters
 Law of Dominance and Recessiveness
 Law of Segregation
 Law of Independent Assortment
Rule of Unit factors in
Pairs
• A Mendelian law which states that every genetic
character of an organism is controlled by unit
factors existing in pairs.
• Mendel described the unit characters as the factors
of inheritance. These factors are now referred to as
genes. These unit factors, accordingly, are the
ones responsible for the variations in inherited
characteristics.
• He further argued that these unit factors (genes)
exist in two sets or in pairs where one trait is
inherited from each parent. Thus, for every
biological trait, there are two unit factors in pairs
that control the same trait. This pair is called
alleles. For instance, a pair of alleles controlling a
particular trait, i.e eye color, one allelle would
code for blue eyes and another allele, for brown
eyes.
 Principle of
Dominance
and Recessiveness
• The genes exist in two alternative forms called alleles.
The two forms of alleles are brought together in
fertilization. As such, one set of alleles would come from
the maternal gamete and the other set from the paternal
gamete. When the two alleles are differ in a way that they
are heterozygous, the allele that would determine the trait
is said to be dominant. The other allele that is masked by
the expression of the dominant allele is referred to as the
recessive allele.
When Mendel performed the
pure-breeding parental crosses,
he obtained only one phenotype
in the F1 generation. He called
the allele of the trait expressed
in the F1 generation as the
dominant allele. The allele that is
masked but reappears in the F2
generation is the recessive
allele.
• When a trait has two forms, and one form can
“overpower” the other, the “overpowering” form is called
dominant. The form that gets “overpowered” is called
recessive.
Law of Segregation
• Mendel hypothesized that allele pairs separate
randomly, or segregate, from each other during the
production of gametes: egg and sperm. Because
allele pairs separate during gamete production, a
sperm or egg carries only one allele for each
inherited trait. When sperm and egg unite at
fertilization, each contributes its allele, restoring the
paired condition in the offspring.
Law of Independent
Assortment
• It states that for every pair of unit factors,
each of them would assort independently into
the newly formed gametes.
• The biological selection of an allele for one
trait has nothing to do with the selection of an
allele for any other trait.