Question

How do Mendel's experiments show that the (a) traits may be dominant or recessive, (b) traits are inherited independently ?

Answer 1

(a) Mendel demonstrated that traits can be either dominant or recessive through his monohybrid cross. He crossed true-breeding tall (TT) and dwarf (tt) pea plants. The seeds formed after fertilisation were grown and the plants that were formed represent the first filial or F1 generation. All the F1 plants obtained were tall. Then, Mendel self-pollinated the F1 plants and observed that all plants obtained in the F2 generation were not tall. Instead, one-fourth of the F2 plants were short. From this experiment, Mendel concluded that the F1 tall plants were not true breeding; they were carrying traits of both short height and tall height. They appeared tall only because the tall trait was dominant over the dwarf trait. This shows that traits may be dominant or recessive.

(b) Mendel demonstrated that traits are inherited independently through his dihybrid cross. He considered two traits at a time, seed colour and seed shape in which yellow colour (YY) and round shape (RR) are dominant over green colour (yy) and wrinkled shape (rr), respectively. Mendel observed that the F2 progeny of dihybrid cross had a phenotypic ratio of 9 : 3 : 3 : 1 and produced nine plants with round yellow seeds, three plants with round green seeds, three plants with wrinkled yellow seeds and one plant with wrinkled green seeds. In this experiment, he found that round yellow and wrinkled green are parental combinations whereas round green and wrinkled yellow are new combinations. In a dihybrid cross between two plants having round yellow (RRYY) and wrinkled green seeds (rryy), four types of gametes (RY, Ry, rY, ry ) are produced. Each of these gametes segregate independently of each other and each has a frequency of 25% of the total gametes produced. From this experiment, he concluded that when two pairs of traits are combined together in a hybrid, one pair of character segregates independent of the other pair of character. This is known as the law of independent assortment.

Answer 2

Answer:

Gregor Mendel demonstrated that genes can be both dominant and recessive through his Monohybrid Cross experiment.

In it, he crossed a tall and a dwarf pea plant. The resultant seeds consisted of the F1 or first filial generation. Since all the plants were tall, he concluded that genes can be dominant i.e., some genes can be very prominent.

In the F2 or second filial generation, one-fourth of the plants were short. so, he concluded that there was a recessive dwarf gene in the plants, i.e., some genes can't be hidden behind a more prominent gene.

Therefore, genes can be both dominant and recessive.

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