Mendel

Introduction

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was an Austrian monk who discovered the basic rules of inheritance. From 1858 to 1866, he bred garden peas in his monastery garden and analyzed the offspring of these matings. The garden pea was good choice of experimental organism because:

• many varieties were available that bred true for clear-cut, qualitative traits like
• seed texture (round vs wrinkled)
• seed color (green vs yellow)
• flower color (white vs purple)
• tall vs dwarf growth habit
• and three others that also varied in a qualitative — rather than quantitative — way.

• peas are normally self-pollinated because the stamens and carpels are enclosed within the petals. By removing the stamens from unripe flowers, Mendel could brush pollen from another variety on the carpels when they ripened.

The first cross

Mendel crossed a pure-breeding round-seeded variety with a pure-breeding wrinkled-seeded one.

Our interpretation

The parents (designated the P generation) were pure-breeding because each was homozygous for the alleles at the gene locus (on chromosome 7) controlling seed texture (RR for round; rr for wrinkled).

The results

All the peas produced in the second or hybrid generation were round.