Important notes on principles of inheritance and variation for plustwo
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Answer:
Genetics is the study of principles and mechanism of heredity and variation. Gregor Johann Mendel is known as ‘father of Genetics’.
Inheritance is the process by which characters are passed on from parent to progeny. It is the basis of heredity.
Variation is the degree by which progeny differ from their parents. Variation may be in terms of morphology, physiology, cytology and behavioristic traits of individual belonging to same species.
Variation arise due to
Reshuffling of gene/chromosomes.
Crossing over or recombination
Mutation and effect of environment.
Mendel’s Law of Inheritance: Mendel conducted hybridization experiments on garden pea (Pisum sativum) for seven years and proposed the law of inheritance in living organisms.
Selection of pea plant: The main reasons for adopting garden pea (Pisum sativum) for experiments by Mendel were –
Pea has many distinct contrasting characters.
Life span of pea plant is short.
Flowers show self-pollination, reproductive whorls being enclosed by corolla.
It is easy to artificially cross-pollinate the pea flowers. The hybrids thus produced were fertile.
Working method: Mendel’s success was also due to his meticulous planning and method of work –
He studied only one character at a time.
He used all available techniques to avoid cross-pollination by undesirable pollen grains.
He applied mathematics and statistics to analyse the results obtained by him.
Mendel selected 7 contrasting characters of garden pea for his hybridization experimentsContrasting Characters Studied by Mendel in Pea
Mendel conducted artificial hybridization/cross pollination using true breeding pea lines. True breeding lines are those that undergo continuous self-pollination and shows stable trait inheritance.
Hybridization experiment includes emasculation (removal of anther) and transfer of pollen (pollination).
Inheritance of one gene (Monohybrid cross)
Mendel crossed tall and dwarf pea plant and collected all the seeds obtained from this cross. He grew all the seeds to generate plants of first hybrid generation called F1 generation. He observed that all the plants are tall. Similar observation was also found in other pair of traits.
Mendel self-pollinated the F1 plants and found that in F2 generation some plants are also dwarf. The proportion of dwarf plants is 1/4th and tall plants of 3/4th.
Mendel called the ‘factors’ that passes through gametes from one generation to next generation. Now a day it is called as genes (unit of inheritance).
Genes that code for a pair of contrasting traits are known as alleles.
Alphabetical symbols are used to represent each gene, capital letter (TT) for gene expressed in F1 generation and small letter (tt) for other gene.
Mendel also proposed that in true breeding tall and dwarf variety allelic pair of genes for height is homozygous (TT or tt). TT, Tt or tt are called genotype and tall and dwarf are called phenotype.
The hybrids which contain alleles which express contrasting traits are called heterozygous (Tt).
The monohybrid ratio of F2 hybrid is 3:1(phenotypic) and 1:2:1(genotypic).
Test cross is the cross between an individual with dominant trait and a recessive organism in order to know whether the dominant trait is homozygous or heterozygous.
Answer:
Mendel was born in 1822 in Heinzendorf, which was a part of Czechoslovakia. His genetic experiments were conducted on garden pea, Pisum sativum in 1856 in the garden at the monastery.
Mendel used the pea plant for his experiments because of the following reasons:
Life span of pea plant is short
Flowers are self-pollinated.
Flowers were hermaphrodite as well as bisexual.
Mendel’s Laws
There were 3 laws that were proposed by Mendel after different experiments on Pea plant