Mendel's Experiments
- Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk
- He was trained in mathematics and natural history at the University of Vienna
- In the mid-19th century, Mendel carried out breeding experiments on large numbers of pea plants whilst looking after the monastery gardens
- He studied how characteristics were passed on between generations of plants
- Due to his extensive work on the understanding of inheritance, he is sometimes called the father of geneticsÂ
Mendel's groundbreaking work
- Mendel carefully transferred pollen from one pea plant to the reproductive parts of another
- This technique eliminated any uncertainty from his data since he knew which plants were fertilized by which pollen
- He collected the pea seeds from these plants and grew them in favourable conditions to find out their characteristics
- He also cross-bred offspring peas in order to find out which, if any characteristics would appear in future generations
- Mendel investigated the height of pea plants, the colours of their flowers and the smoothness of their seed coat
Mendel's pea plant crosses
Mendel's Pea Plant Results Table
- Mendel found that characteristics were inherited in a predictable pattern
- All pea plants in the first generation had the same characteristic as one of the parental plants
- The offspring plants in the second generation had characteristics of both parent plants in a 3:1 ratio
- Without knowing it, Mendel had discovered genes, he referred to them as 'units of inheritance'
- He also discovered that some genes are dominant and some genes are recessive
- Different forms of the same gene are called alleles