Mendel & His Peas
This Augustinian friar is famously known as the "father of genetics" for his landmark research published in the mid-1800s.
Who is Gregor Mendel?
These two primary reproductive components of a flower provide the "factors" (alleles) passed through gametes.
What are pollen (sperm) and eggs?
These are defined as alternative forms of the same gene, such as "T" for tall or "t" for short.
What are alleles?
his is the common phenotypic ratio found in the F2 generation of Mendel’s crosses, representing 75% dominant and 25% recessive traits.
What is 3:1?
Traits that are controlled by multiple genes—sometimes hundreds—are known as this.
What are polygenic traits?
Between 1856 and 1863, Mendel conducted his foundational studies using approximately 29,000 of these plants.
What are pea plants?
This term describes a breeding experiment, like crossing a tall plant with a short one, that follows only a single trait.
What is a monohybrid cross?
This term refers to the visible, physical characteristics of a plant, such as purple flowers or round seeds.
What is a phenotype?
This tool is used by geneticists to predict and visualize all possible gamete combinations from a cross.
What is a Punnett Square?
Besides genetics, these external factors can also impact how a plant's traits are expressed.
What are environmental impacts?
This 1800s theory, which Mendel eventually rejected, proposed that parental traits simply mixed together in their offspring like paint.
What is the blending hypothesis?
On a pea plant, the stamen consists of these two specific parts.
What are the anther and the filament?
If a plant carries two different alleles for a trait (such as Tt), it is described by this term.
What is heterozygous?
In a cross between two heterozygous (Tt) plants, this is the percentage of offspring expected to show the recessive phenotype.
What is 25%?
This term describes traits that are inherited together because they are located close to each other on the same chromosome.
What are linked traits?
To ensure his results were stable, Mendel created these "pure" plant lines by crossing plants with the same trait for several generations.
What are true-breeding (or pure-breeding) plants?
This female part of the flower is where pollen is deposited during fertilization.
What is the stigma?
This term refers to the internal genetic characteristics or allele combinations of an organism.
What is a genotype?
When Mendel crossed 7,324 seeds for shape, he found that 5,474 were round and 1,850 were wrinkled, resulting in this specific calculated ratio.
What is 2.96 (or approximately 3:1)?
Mendel concluded that versions of a trait do not blend but instead maintain this type of identity in offspring.
What is a discrete identity?
Mendel's work remained largely unnoticed by the scientific community for roughly this many years after its publication.
What is 25 years?
To determine the genotype of a tall plant with unknown alleles, you should breed it with a plant that is this.
What is pure short (homozygous recessive/tt)?
An organism that possesses two of the same dominant alleles (TT) is known by this specific term.
What is homozygous dominant?
If a testcross results in 50% tall and 50% short offspring, you can conclude the unknown parent had this genotype.
What is heterozygous (Tt)?
These types of traits do not follow the simple dominant/recessive patterns discovered by Mendel and are often much more complicated.
What is non-Mendelian genetics?