Mendel Flashcards, test questions and answers
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What is Mendel?
Gregor Mendel was a pioneering scientist who laid the foundations for modern genetics. He developed his theories on inheritance through his famous experiments with pea plants in the mid-1800s. His groundbreaking work forever changed the way that scientists view heredity and evolution.Mendel was born in 1822 in what is now part of the Czech Republic to a peasant family. From an early age, Mendel showed an aptitude for science and mathematics and eventually went on to become a monk at St. Thomas’s Abbey in Brno, Czech Republic. It was during this time that Mendel began breeding pea plants in order to study their inherited traits.Mendel crossed different varieties of peas, carefully recording the resulting offspring’s traits for seven distinct characteristics: plant height, flower color, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and cotyledon color (the embryonic leaf inside each seed). He concluded that these traits were inherited according to specific laws now known as Mendel’s laws of inheritance or Mendelian genetics which states that certain characters are dominant while others are recessive within each generation of offspring. He determined that one pair of characteristics will always be passed down from parent to child without any mixing or blending taking place between them meaning they are either expressed or unexpressed depending on their type (dominant/recessive). Mendel’s work went largely unnoticed until it was rediscovered by other scientists several decades later; his experiments proved invaluable for understanding how genes get passed down from generation to generation and how mutations can occur as well as providing insight into evolution itself. Today he is regarded as one of the most influential figures in genetics history; his findings have been integral parts of our knowledge about hereditary diseases such as cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia as well genetic engineering practices like cloning animals or growing genetically modified crops.