What did Mendel use the principles of?
Answers
Genes located on different chromosomes will be inherited independently of each other. Mendel observed that, when peas with more than one trait were crossed, the progeny did not always match the parents. This is because different traits are inherited independently – this is the principle of independent assortment.
Our understanding of how inherited traits are passed between generations comes from principles first proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1866. Mendel worked on pea plants, but his principles apply to traits in plants and animals – they can explain how we inherit our eye colour, hair colour and even tongue-rolling ability.
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) is known as the father of genetics. He proposed the key laws of genetics from this work on inheritance of traits in peas in 1866.
Inheritance in pea plants
Mendel followed the inheritance of 7 traits in pea plants (Pisum sativum). He chose traits that had 2 forms:
Pea shape (round or wrinkled)
Pea colour (yellow or green)
Flower colour (purple or white)
Flower position (terminal or axial)
Plant height (tall or short)
Pod shape (inflated or constricted)
Pod colour (yellow or green).
Mendel began with pure-breeding pea plants because they always produced progeny with the same characteristics as the parent plant. Mendel cross-bred these pea plants and recorded the traits of their progeny over several generations.