MENDEL’S
LAWS OF INHERITANCE
ROLL NO 41-50
Gregor Mendel
-Father of Modern Genetics
• Gregor Mendel was an Austrian scientist who lived
in the 1800s.
• He experimented on garden pea hybrids and is
known as the father of modern genetics.
• By experimenting with pea plant breeding, Mendel
developed three principles of inheritance that
described the transmission of genetic traits, before
anyone knew genes existed.
• Mendel's insight greatly expanded the
understanding of genetic inheritance in the modern
world.
What is a GENE?
Gene is the unit of inheritance
• Gene is something which is passed on
unchanged from parent to offspring
through the gametes, over successive
generations.
• They contain the information that is
required to express a particular trait in an
organism.
LOCUS
Plural- loci
• the actual physical location of the gene on
the region of a chromosome.
ALLELE
• Allele is a variant of a gene
controlling the same traits
• It usually occurs in pairs.
• Depending on how they are
expressed they may be dominant or
recessive.
Dominant: The allele which shows its
full expression in a population.
It has two different copies It contains two same copies Recessive: The allele which is unable to
of the same allele coding for of alleles coding for a show its full expression or expresses very less
a particular trait. particular trait. in a population.
MENDEL’S EXPERIMENTS
• Gregor Mendel, conducted hybridisation
experiments on garden peas for seven years
(1856-1863) and proposed the laws of
inheritance in living organisms.
• Mendel investigated characters in the garden
pea plant that were manifested as two
opposing traits.
• Mendel selected 14 true-breeding pea plant
varieties, as pairs which were similar except
for one character with contrasting traits.
MONO-HYBRID
-inheritance of one gene-
• Mendel crossed tall and dwarf pea plants to study the
inheritance of one gene.
• He collected the seeds produced and grew them to generate
plants of the first hybrid generation. This generation is also
called the Filial-1.
• Mendel then self-pollinated the tall F1 plants and to his surprise
found that in the Filial-2, generation some of the offspring were
‘dwarf’; the character that was not seen in the F1 generation
was now expressed.
• All the offspring were either tall or dwarf, none were of in-
between height
Result- He found that the F1 always resembled either one of
the parents, and that the trait of the other parent was not seen in
them.
-While at the F2 stage both the traits were expressed in the
proportion 3:1.
-The contrasting traits did not show any blending at either F1 or
F2 stage.
Inference from Mendel’s observations-
• Something stably, without any change, was passed on from parents’
to offspring- which he called factors but is now we call them as Genes
• And each trait can be located on a chromosome, at a point called
Locus
• Each contrasting traits are called Allele .
• And there are two types of Allele’s -Dominant and Recessive
• The same allelic pair of genes are called homozygous.
Eg- for height TT and tt
• The different allelic pair are called heterozygous Eg- Tt
PHENOTYPE AND GENOTYPE
PUNNET’S SQUARE
• The production of gametes by the parents,
the formation of the zygotes, the F1 and F2
plants can be understood from a diagram
called Punnett Square (It was developed by
a British geneticist, Reginald C. Punnett.)
• It is a graphical representation to calculate
the probability of all possible genotypes of
offspring in a genetic cross.
• The possible gametes are written on two
sides, usually the top row and left columns.
All possible combinations are represented
in boxes below in the squares, which
generates a square output form.
From the Punnett square it is easily seen that;
In F1 generation-
• 1/4th of the random fertilisations lead to TT,
• 1/2 lead to Tt
• 1/4th to tt.
Though the F1 have a genotype of Tt, but the phenotypic
character seen is ‘tall’.
At F2 generation-
• 3/4th of the plants are tall (where some of them are TT
while others are Tt)
• the character T or ‘tall’ is said to dominate over the
other allele t or ‘dwarf’ character.
• It is thus due to this dominance of one character over
the other that all the F1 are tall (though the genotype is
Tt)
• And in the F2, 3/4th of the plants are tall
• This leads to a phenotypic ratio of 3/4th tall :
(1/4 TT + 1/2 Tt)
and 1/4th tt Dwarf,
i.e., a 3:1 ratio, but a genotypic ratio of [Link]
What is a TEST CROSS?
In regards to Mendel’s experiments,
• Whether a tall plant from F1 or F2 has TT (Homozygous) or Tt
(Heterozygous) composition, cannot be predicted.
• Therefore, to determine the genotype of a tall plant at F2, Mendel crossed the
tall plant from F2 with a dwarf plant. This he called a test cross.
• In a typical test cross, test organism showing a dominant phenotype is crossed
with the recessive parent instead of self-crossing.
• The progenies of such a cross can easily be analysed to predict the genotype of
the test organism.
What is a TEST CROSS?
the results of typical test cross where violet colour flower (W) is
dominant over white colour flower (w)
Conclusions from Mendel’s Experiments
Mendel proposed 2 laws based on his Mono-Hybrid observations, these laws
are called
“PRINCIPLES/ LAWS OF INHERITANCE”
Those are-
1. Laws Of Dominance
2. Law Of Segregation - Incomplete Dominance & Co-Dominance
1. Law Of Dominance
The law of dominance is used to explain the expression of only one of the parental characters in
a monohybrid cross in the F1 and the expression of both in the F2. It also explains the
proportion of 3:1 obtained at the F2
(i) Characters are controlled by discrete units called factors.
(ii) Factors occur in pairs.
(iii) In a dissimilar pair of factors one member of the pair dominates (dominant) the other (recessive).
2. Law of Segregation
• This law is based on the fact that the alleles do not show any blending and that both the characters are
recovered in the F2 generation though one of these is not seen at the F1 stage.
• Though the parents contain two alleles during gamete formation, the factors or alleles of a pair
segregate from each other such that a gamete receives only one of the two factors.
• Of course, a homozygous parent produces all gametes that are similar
• While a heterozygous one produces two kinds of gametes each having one allele with equal
proportion.
Law of segregation – Incomplete Dominance
• When experiments on peas were repeated using “Flower Color”
trait in other plants, the inheritance of flower color in the Snap
Dragons is a good example to understand incomplete
dominance.
• In a cross between true-breeding red-flowered (RR) and true
breeding white-flowered plants (rr), the F1 (Rr) was pink.
• When the F1 was self-pollinated the F2 resulted in the following
ratio 1 (RR) Red: 2 (Rr) Pink: 1 (rr) White.
• Here the genotype ratios were exactly as we would expect in any
mendelian monohybrid cross, but the phenotype ratios had
changed from the 3:1 dominant : recessive ratio.
Dog Flower
(Snap Dragon or Antirrhinum sp.)
Reason- R (red) was not completely dominant over r (white)
and this made it possible to distinguish Rr as pink from RR (red)
and rr (white) .
• Every gene, as you know by now,
contains the information to express
a particular trait.
• In a diploid organism, there are two
copies of each gene, i.e., as a pair of
alleles.
• Now, these two alleles need not
always be identical, as in a
heterozygote. One of them may be
different due to some changes that it
has undergone which modifies the
information that particular allele
contains.
Co- Dominance In Our Blood Group
• ABO blood groups are controlled by the gene I. The plasma membrane of the red blood
cells has sugar polymers that protrude from its surface and the kind of sugar is
controlled by the gene.
• The gene (I) has three alleles IA, IB and i.
• The alleles IA and IB produce a slightly different form of the sugar while allele i does not
produce any sugar.
• Because humans are diploid organisms, each person possesses any two of the three I
gene alleles. IA and IB are completely dominant over i.
• In other words when IA and i are present only IA expresses (because i does not produce
any sugar), and when IB and i are present only IB expresses.
• But when IA and IB are present together they both express their own types of sugars:
• This is because of co-dominance. Hence these red blood cells have both A and B types of
sugars.
There are six different combinations of these three alleles that are possible, and therefore, a total of
six different genotypes of the human ABO blood types.
• ABO blood grouping also provides a good example of multiple alleles.
INHERITANCE OF TWO GENES
Mendel also worked with and crossed pea plants that differed in two characters, such as the cross between a
pea plant that has seeds with yellow colour and round shape and one that had seeds of green colour and
wrinkled shape.
• When Mendel self hybridised the F1 plants he found that 3/4th of F2 plants had yellow seeds and 1/4th
had green. Hence,
1. The yellow and green colour segregated in a 3:1 ratio.
2. Round and wrinkled seed shape also segregated in a 3:1 ratio; just like in a monohybrid cross.
• The Punnett square can be effectively used to understand the “independent segregation” of the two pairs of
genes during meiosis and the production of eggs and pollen in the F1 RrYy plant
• We use genotypic symbols:
1. Y for dominant yellow seed colour and
2. y for recessive green seed colour,
3. R for round shaped seeds and
4. r for wrinkled seed shape.
• The genotype of the parents can then be written as RRYY
and rryy.
• The cross between the two plants can be written down
showing the genotypes of the parent plants. The gametes RY
and ry unite on fertilisation to produce the F1 hybrid RrYy.
RESULTS OF DIHYBRID CROSS
• In the dihybrid cross the phenotypes round, yellow;
wrinkled, yellow; round, green and wrinkled, green appeared
in the ratio [Link].
• The ratio of [Link] can be derived as a combination series of 3
yellow: 1 green, with 3 round : 1 wrinkled. This derivation
can be written as follows:
(3 Round : 1 Wrinkled) (3 Yellow : 1 Green) = 9 Round, Yellow
:3
Wrinkled, Yellow: 3 Round, Green : 1 Wrinkled, Green
Observation done in dihybrid cross-
• Considering segregation of one pair of genes R and r. Fifty per cent of the gametes have the gene R and the other
50 per cent have gene r.
• Now besides each gamete having either R or r, it should also have the allele Y or y.
• The important thing to remember here is that segregation of 50 per cent R and 50 per cent r is independent from
the segregation of 50 per cent Y and 50 per cent y.
• Therefore, 50 per cent of the r bearing gametes has Y and the other 50 per cent has y. Similarly, 50 per cent of the
R bearing gametes has Y and the other 50 per cent has y.
• Thus there are four genotypes of gametes (four types of pollen and four types of eggs). The four types are RY, Ry,
rY and ry each with a frequency of 25 per cent or 1/4th of the total gametes produced.
• When you write down the four types of eggs and pollen on the two sides of a Punnett square it is very easy to
derive the composition of the zygotes that give rise to the F2 plants
LAW OF INDEPENDENT ASSORTMENT
Mendel proposed a second set of generalisations that we call -Mendel’s Law of Independent Assortment
The law states that-
‘when two pairs of traits are combined in a hybrid, segregation of one pair
of characters is independent of the other pair of characters’.
Thus, yellow color was dominant over green & round shape dominant over wrinkled.
What is a Genome?
The complete set of DNA (genetic material) in an organism.
• DNA is the unit forming genome. It carries all information that makes the body.
• The gene is a part of DNA that has instructions for making a certain protein or multiple protiens. Genes are
present on chromosomes found inside the nucleus of a living cell.
• Generally, every living cell contains about 3 billion base pairs of DNA which is a complete copy of the genome
in a body. There are 23 pairs of chromosomes carrying genes responsible for the synthesis of a protein with the
aid of other messenger molecules and enzymes.
THE HUMAN GENOME INCLUDES:
1. CODING REGIONS OF THE DNA (GENES)
2. NON-CODING REGIONS OF THE DNA
PRESENT IN-
• NUCLEUS (nuclear DNA)
• MITOCHONDRION (mitochondrial DNA)
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