Heredity
1. Heredity: It refers to the transmission of characters or traits from the parents to their
offspring. Heredity is the continuity of features from one generation to another which are
present in fertilised egg or zygote. The zygote develops into an organism of a particular type
only.
2. Genetics: It is the branch of biology which deals with heredity and variation. Genetics is to
help our understanding of heredity by knowing how offspring inherit characteristics from
their parents.
3. Variation: It means the differences in the characters or traits among the individuals of a
species. Variations occur due to error in DNA copying and as a result of recombination
during meiosis, during sexual reproduction. Variations contribute to evolution.
Importance of variations:
1. It forms, the basis of heredity.
2. It causes adaptations due to which organism can easily adjust to its changing
environment.
3. Accumulation of variations forms the basis of evolution.
Remember!
Variations are produced both in sexual and asexual reproduction but amount of variations
produced in asexual reproduction are subtle (so little) that they are hardly noticeable as
compared to variations caused due to sexual reproduction.
4. Genotype: The genetic constitution of an organism is called genotype. e.g., Genotype of
human male is 44 + XY and genotype of human female is 44 + XX
5. Phenotype: The physical appearance of a trait, i.e., the way in which a genotype is
expressed is called phenotype. Phenotype is the result of interaction of genes with the
environment.
e.g., Red colour may be controlled by a pair of genes RR. Now if genotype is RR phenotype
will be red but if genotype is Rr, then also the phenotype will be red since R is a dominant
gene.
6. Gene: It is the basic unit of inheritance by which characters are transferred from parents to
their offspring. Gene consists of a specific length of DNA on a chromosome. A specific
Segment of DNA that provides the information for one protein is called gene for that protein.
7. Clones are those organisms which are exact copies of each other.
8. Paired condition of chromosomes is called DIPLOID.
9. Unpaired condition of chromosomes is called HAPLOID.
Mendel and His Work on Inheritance
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 - 1884) : Started his experiments on plant breeding and
hybridisation. He proposed the laws of inheritance in living organisms.
Law of Dominance, Law of segregation, Law of Independent Assortment.
Mendel is known as the Father of Genetics
Plant selected by Mendel: Pisum sativum (garden pea).
It is a short lived plant (annual)
It is a self-pollinating plant.
Easy to conduct cross pollination experiments.
The plant shows seven pairs of contrasting characters (shown above).
Mendel’s Experiments: Mendel conducted a series of experiments in which he crossed
and self-pollinated plants to study the inheritance of characters.
Cross between two plants to study the inheritance of one pair of contrasting characters is
called a monohybrid cross.
Cross between a tall and a dwarf (short) plant.
Phenotypic ratio: 3:1
Genotypic ratio: [Link] (TT: Tt: tt)
Observations of Monohybrid Cross
1. All F1 progeny were tall (no medium height plant (half way characteristic)
2. F2 progeny ¼ were short(dwarf), 3/4 were tall
3. Phenotypic ratio F2 – 3 : 1 (3 tall : 1 short)
Genotypic ratio F2 – [Link] (1 pure tall: 2 hybrid tall: 1 pure dwarf)
Conclusions
1. TT and Tt both are tall plants while tt is a short plant.
2. A single copy of T is enough to make the plant tall, while both copies have to be‘t’ for the
plant to be short.
3. Characters/Traits like ‘T’ are called dominant trait because it expresses itself in first filial
generation and ‘t’ are recessive trait because it remains suppressed in the first filial
generation.
From these observations, Mendel put forward the rules of inheritance.
Law of Dominance: When parents with pure, contrasting traits are crossed, only one form of
the trait will appear in the next generation. The hybrid offspring will exhibit only the
dominant trait in the phenotype.
Law of Segregation: Every individual possesses a pair of alleles for a particular trait. During
gamete formation, a gamete receives only one of the alleles of each gene. A gamete will
always be pure for a trait.
Dihybrid Cross : A cross between two plants to study the inheritance of two pairs of
contrasting characters is called dihybrid cross.
When RRyy was crossed with rrYY in F1 generation all were Rr Yy round and yellow seeds.
1. Self pollination of F1 plants gave parental phenotype and two mixtures(recombinants
round yellow & wrinkled green) seeds plants in the ratio of [Link]
Phenotypic Ratio [Link]
Round, yellow - 9
Round, green - 3
Wrinkled, yellow - 3
Wrinkled, green – 1
Conclusions
1. Round and yellow seeds are DOMINANT characters
2. Occurrences of new phenotypic combinations show that genes for round and yellow seeds
are inherited independently of each other.
Law of Independent Assortment: During a dihybrid cross, each pair of trait is assorted
independent of the each other.
In the above example, shape of seed would assort independent from that of seed colour.
SEX DETERMINATION
FACTORS
Sex Chromosomes: In human beings there are 23 pairs of chromosome. Out of these 22
chromosomes pairs are called autosomes and the last pair of chromosome that help in
deciding gender of that individual is called sex chromosome.
XX – female
XY – male
This shows that every time a child is born, there is 50% probability of a boy child and 50%
probability of a girl child being born. All children will inherit an X chromosome from their
mother regardless whether they are boys or girls. Thus sex of children will be determined by
what they inherit from their father, and not from their mother.
