1. Gregor Mendel Father of Genetics

2. Biography
Mendel graduated from the University of Vienna where he studied from 1851 to He then became a Austrian monk.
He taught high school math and science, and he worked in the monastery garden where he did all his research.
He published his work, but received little recognition from colleagues at the time.
In fact, most of his research was burned after his death.

3. Before Mendel
People believed that offspring were a “blend” of their parents.
Example: If you cross a red flower with a white flower, you will get a pink flower. Right? (well, it works when mixing paint, but…)
It turns out, Mendel proved this was all wrong by using thousands of pea plants.

4. Pea Plants

5. Pea Pods

6. Pea flowers

7. Vocab time…
Pea plants inherit a pair, two alleles of genetic instructions, or the genotype from each parent. TT, Tt or tt or PP, Pp or pp
Dominant (T) vs. recessive (t).
Dominant doesn’t mean in charge of, dominant means “expressed” when one or both alleles that are dominant are present.
Example TT or Tt=Tall and tt=dwarf
or PP or Pp=Purple and pp=white

8. Genotype vs. Phenotype
Genotype is the genetic code such as TT, Tt, CC, pp, Aa Phenotype is the “physical” appearance for the trait such as tall, short, curly, etc.

9. More vocab…
Homozygous means both alleles are the same TT or AA or BB or tt or aa or bb
Heterozygous means both alleles are different Tt or Aa or Bb
Also termed as…
Purebred TT or tt
Hybrid Tt

10. Punnett Squares
Reginald Punnett used Mendel’s data, and in the early 1900’s, he created a chart that demonstrated the probability of possible outcomes in any cross of one or more traits.

12. Flower Anatomy 101

13. Mendel kept the crosses pure. This called for high tech tools.

14. Purebred Cross

15. Hybrid Cross

16. Mendel’s Results

17. Try One! Tt x tt

18. Traits of Peas

19. Try another

20. Peas out…