Mendel's Work on Genetics
- Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk
- He was trained in mathematics and natural history at the University of Vienna
- In the mid-19th century, Mendel carried out breeding experiments on plants
- He studied how characteristics were passed on between generations of plants
- For example, he conducted studies with pea plants and looked at how the height characteristic was inherited
- One of his observations was that the inheritance of each characteristic is determined by ‘units’ that are passed on to descendants unchanged
- Using the example above, Mendel showed that height in pea plants was the result of separately inherited ‘hereditary units’ passed down from each parent plant to the offspring plants – this particular experiment showed that the ‘unit’ for tall plants (T) was dominant over the ‘unit’ for short plants (t)
- His work eventually provided the foundation for modern genetics
- The importance of Mendel’s discovery was not recognised until after his death:
- His studies were totally new to science in the 19th century
- There was no knowledge of the mechanisms behind his findings (DNA, genes and chromosomes had not been discovered yet)