Who is Mendel and what is his contribution to science?

Answer 1

He was a monk.

Answer 2

Gregor Mendel discovered how traits are transferred from parent to offspring. He did this by crossing pea plants containing various traits and found the probability of these traits being present in the offspring. These probabilities were represented as alleles (ah-LEELZ) (and were later calculated using Punnett squares). Mendel found that if a trait was less likely to be present in an offspring than another trait, that trait would be considered recessive. The trait that is more likely would be considered dominant. For example, when Mendel crossed a pea plant with wrinkled seeds with a pea plant with round seeds, he would find that the pea plants with round seeds would be produced 75% or 3/4 of the time while pea plants with wrinkled seeds would be produced 25% or 1/4 of the time. Round seeds were therefore a dominant trait while wrinkled seeds were recessive.

Fun fact: Mendel was a priest

Answer 3

Gregor Mendel, born Johan Mendel (he changed his name after joining the monastic life) is best known for being the 'Father of Modern Genetics'. He was an Austrian Augustinian monk and scientist who was far ahead of his time, developng his theory of inheritance several decades before chromosomes were even observed in a microscope.

Mendel was best known for his pea experiment on which his then abstract theories on inheritance of traits were made. Arguably the smartest thing he did in the entire experiment was to pick the pea plant as his experimenting organism. Why? Because the pea plant has very distinctive traits, which he was purposefully looking for. These traits are flower colour (purple or white), flower position (axial or terminal), seed colour (yellow or green), seed shape (round or wrinkled), pod shape (inflated or constricted), pod colour (geen or yellow) and stem length (tall or 'dwarf'). Other advantages to the pea plant were their short generation time, large number of offspring from mating, and the ability to control the mating between the two plants (by artificial cross-pollination and forced self-pollination (pea plants usually self-fertilize)).

So Mendel started off his experiment by ensuring that the pea plants he started out with were, over many generation of self pollination, pure-bred, or 'true-breeding' He would cross two of these plants (the parental generation or P generation), for example purple flowered and white flowered (known as hybridization) to produce the F1 generation (the 1st Filial generation). He would then let the F1 generation self-fertilize, giving rise to the F2 generation (you guessed it - the 2nd Filial generation).

His quantitative analysis (counting of which plants had what traits, e.g. 705 plants have purple flowers, 224 plants have white flowers) of the F2 plants from the thousands of genetic crosses that he did allowed him to create 2 laws, now fundemental principles of heredity, known as the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment.

What are these laws?

The law of segregation states that alleles (alternative versions of genes which produce visible differences, such as purple and white flowers) are divided into different offspring.

This was proven when Mendel's F2 Generation had white flowers when the F1 Generation had none but the Parent Generation did. Because the white flowers reappeard in F2 Generation, it can be deduced that the allele for white flowers was somehow masked in the F1 Generation, but was nevertheless present.

The law of independent assortment states that each pair of alleles segregates without consideration to the other pairs.

This was found when two traits were being looked at. Mendel noted that yes, perhaps purple flowers in axial positions seemed to occur most often. Was this a two-for-one package? Obviously not because there were also pea plants with white flowers in axial positions and in terminal positions as well as purple flowers in terminal positions.

With the information we now know, this law applies mostly to genes on different chromosomes (think of meiosis), genes that are close to each other on a chromosome tend to be inherited together and have a much more confusing and complicated inheritance pattern.

It was these contributions and discoveries that earned Mendel the title, Father of Modern Genetics. I've said previously that he was ahead of his time - he was so ahead that all of these contributions and discoveries were properly recognized posthumously - after he died and they were rediscovered independently.

Answer 4

Gregor Mendel was a monk and a teacher. He discovered genetics. He used pea plants to represent the 1 to 2 to 1 ratio. He mixed green and yellow peas seeds, and found out (after many tries) that the characteristics of two different peas would grow a new pea. For example: he put a wrinkly yellow pea with a smooth green pea and they grew into a wrinkly green pea.

Answer 5

He was a Australian Monk, known as the godfather of genetics, and it was he who discovered that inheritance is determined by genes.

Answer 6

Gregor Mendel was a famous scientist who discovered the passing of traits from parent to offspring (genetics).