Gregor Mendel The Father of Genetics

1. Who was Gregor Mendel?  He was an Augustinian monk who later became the abbot of his monastery. The Abbey of Saint Thomas and its Church in the year

2.When & where was he born?  He was born in 1822 in what is now the Czech Republic.

3. What did Mendel do for a living?  He was educated as a math & science teacher, and became interested in botany (plants). He did research on plants in the monastery.  He is the “Father of Genetics.” 4. What is his title?

The abbey garden where Gregor Mendel conducted his experiments.

5. What species of plant did he mainly study?  He studied pea plants.  He studied dwarf (short) and tall plants. 6. What size plants did he study? services/crop-production/index.jsp ee/BIOBK/BioBookgenintro.html

7. What characteristics of the plants did he study?  Height (tall or short)  Flower position (on side of stem or on top of stem)  Flower color (white or purple)  Seed color (green or yellow)  Seed shape (round or wrinkled)  Seed pod color (yellow or green)  Seed pod shape (inflated or constricted)

8. How long did he study these plants?  He studied them for about 8 years.  He noticed that he got offspring with different characteristics than their parents, and he wanted to know why. 9. What sparked his interest in these plants?

Genetic Vocabulary  Genotype: the genes, represented by 2 letters (tt, TT, Tt)  Phenotype: the trait or characteristic (tall or short)  Homozygous: same letters both upper case or both lower case (TT, tt)  Heterozygous: different letters (Tt) hybrid

10. What happened when he bred 2 pure dwarf plants (tt)? Do the punnett square

Homozygous recessive parents tt ttt ttt

11. What happened when he bred 2 pure tall plants (TT)? Do the punnett square

Homozygous dominant parents TT TTT TTT

12. What happened when he bred 1 pure dwarf with 1 pure tall plant? Do the punnett square

Homozygous recessive and dominant parents tt T TtTtTtTt T TtTtTtTt

13. What happened when he bred the offspring of this match (Tt)? Do the punnett square

Heterozygous parents Tt TTTtTt tTtTtt

16. What is a true-breeder?  It is basically an organism that will produce offspring which are identical to it. (Pure-bred)  It is an organism whose offspring are not necessarily identical to it. 17. What is a non-true-breeder?

18. Why did Mendel stop his work?  He became too stout to successfully tend his plants, and he had increased responsibilities due to his promotion to head abbot. Also, although he had published his findings in a scientific journal in 1865, his work was ignored.  He died in 1884, unsuccessful & alone. 19. When did Mendel die?

20. When was Mendel’s work discovered?  His work was not discovered until 1900, when 3 other scientists who had been looking at similar patterns stumbled upon Mendel’s research. They rightfully gave him credit as being the founding father for this new field in science.

Final Thoughts 1. What controls a person’s features or characteristics?  Genes 2. How do organisms get these features/characteristics?  They inherit them from each parent. 3. How many do they inherit from each parent?  ½ from each parent.

Final Thoughts 4. How do genes “travel” and settle down?  They travel in pairs. 5. Why do some families have all brown hair?  That is probably a dominant trait in that family.