1. Genetics and Heredity

2. What is heredity?
The passing on of characteristics from parents to offspring.
Genetics is the branch of biology that studies heredity
the characteristics that are inherited are traits.

3. Father of Modern Genetics
Gregor Mendel – Augustinian Monk in 1856 to 1863
Experimented on heredity and traits
First person to be able to predict traits

4. Mendel’s Subject
He chose pea plants, which reproduce sexually, which means they have two distinct sex cells, male and female.
sex cells are called gametes.
the transfer of male pollen grains to the pistil of a flower is called pollination
the uniting of male and female gametes is called fertilization

5. Crosses
A hybrid is the offspring of parents that have different forms of a trait, such as tall and short.
Mendel first did monohybrid crosses, which means he was looking at only one trait.

6. Mendel’s crosses

7. The rule of dominance Every trait is coded for by two genes
the genes have different forms called Alleles.
Alleles are either dominant, recessive or co-dominant

8. the law of segregation
That when gametes are formed, the parent separates their two genes that code for the same trait. So the child gets one from each parent.

9. phenotype
the way an organism looks and behaves is called it’s phenotype.
example: what color are your eyes, or your hair?
what you see is the phenotype.

10. Genotype
the gene combination an organism contains is known as genotype.

11. Homozygous vs. Heterozygous
an organism that is homozygous for a trait has two alleles for the trait that are the same.
an organism that is heterozygous for a trait has two different alleles (dominant and recessive).