Specific Objective Of the

Course
To understand:

 Structure and functions of cell

 Nature of genetic material and hereditary

process

 Familiarization with evolutionary process

Genetics

 Branch of biology concerned with the study

of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in
living organisms.
GENES
 A gene is a sequence of DNA or RNA that
codes for a molecule that has a function
 Unit of heredity
 .
Heredity
 Passing on of traits from parents to their
offspring, either through asexual reproduction
or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or
organisms acquire the genetic information of
their parents.
Variations
 Genetic variation is a term used to describe
the variation in the DNA sequence in each of
our genomes.
 History of Genetics
 For much of human history people were
unaware of the scientific details of how babies
were conceived and how heredity worked
 The Greek philosophers had a variety of ideas:
Theophrastus proposed that male flowers caused
female flowers to ripen
Hippocrates speculated that "seeds" were
produced by various body parts and transmitted
to offspring at the time of conception, ".
 .
Aristotle thought that male and female semen
mixed at conception.
Aeschylus, in 458 BC, proposed the male as the
parent, with the female as a "nurse for the
young life sown within her
Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723): During
the 1700s, Dutch microscopist discovered
"animalcules" in the sperm of humans and
other animals.
 .
 In 1700’s Two theories proposed:
Spermisits
Female only provide womb to the new generation
in which it grew
Ovists
Believed that the future human was in the egg, and
that sperm merely stimulated the growth of the
egg.
 .
 During the 19th century. Blending theories of inheritance
replaced the spermists and ovists

 The mixture of sperm and egg resulted in progeny that were a

"blend" of two parents' characteristics.

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)

 Known as the Father of Genetics
 Developed the fundamental principles that would become the
modern science of genetics
 His idea was:
“Both male and female are involved in the transfer of characters”

 Characters are transforming in the form of discrete units called

them as Factors (genes)
Function/ Scope of Genetics
 Genetics deals with the study of molecular structure
and function of genes

 DNA serves two essential functions that deal with

cellular information.

 First, DNA is the genetic material responsible

for inheritance and is passed from parent to offspring
for all life on earth.

 The second function of DNA is to direct and regulate

the construction of the proteins necessary to a cell for
growth and reproduction in a particular cellular
environment.
 A gene is composed of DNA that is “read” or
. transcribed to produce an RNA molecule during
the process of transcription.
 One major type of RNA molecule,
called messenger RNA (mRNA), provides the
information for the ribosome to catalyze protein
synthesis in a process called translation.
 The processes of transcription and translation are
collectively referred to as gene expression.
 Gene expression is the synthesis of a specific
protein with a sequence of amino acids that is
encoded in the gene.
.

 The flow of genetic information from DNA to

RNA to protein is described by the central
dogma
 Mendelian Inheritance
Life history
•Known as
father of
“Modern
Genetics”
•Born in
Country
Siliciae in
1822
Mendel studied 7 Traits
Mendel’s First Set of Experiments
Mendel first experimented with
just one characteristic of a pea
plant at a time.
He began with flower color.
Mendel cross-pollinated purple-
and white-flowered parent
plants.
The parent plants in the
experiments are referred to as
the P (for parent) generation.
 F1 and F2 Generations

 The offspring of the P generation are called

the F1 (for filial, or “offspring”) generation.
 All of the plants in the F1 generation had purple
flowers. None of them had white flowers.
 Mendel wondered what had happened to the white-
flower characteristic.
 He assumed some type of inherited factor produces
white flowers and some other inherited factor
produces purple flowers.
 Did the white-flower factor just disappear in the F1
generation? If so, then the offspring of the F1
generation—called the F2 generation—should all
have purple flowers like their parents.
.
 To test this prediction, Mendel allowed the F1
generation plants to self-pollinate.
 He was surprised by the results.
 Some of the F2 generation plants had white
flowers.
 He studied hundreds of F2 generation plants,
and for every three purple-flowered plants,
there was an average of one white-flowered
plant.
General Terms
Allele:
An allele is a variant form of a gene.
Each pair of alleles represents the genotype of a specific gene
Homozygous:
refers to a particular gene that has identical alleles on both homologous
chromosomes.
capital letters (XX) for a dominant trait
lowercase letters (xx) for a recessive trait.
 Heterozygous:
.A diploid organism is heterozygousat a gene locus
when its cells contain two different alleles (one
wild-type allele and one mutant allele) of a gene.

 Genotype:
the set of genes in our
DNA which is responsible
for a particular trait.

 phenotype
the physical expression, or characteristics, of that
trait.