What was Thomas Hunt Morgan's main contribution to science?

Answer 1

Thomas Hunt Morgan's best known discovery stems from his famous Fly experiment. He basically concluded that chromosomes are the location of Mendel's heritable factors.

So how did he discover this?

It's a funny story because Morgan was initially skeptical about the whole Mendelism and chromosome theory idea, but his experiments in the Fly Room at Columbia University actually provided evidence for it.

Morgan decided to use this really common species of fruit fly, called the Drosophila melanogaster. It was a smart move because 1. they breed... prolifically - a single mating produces hundreds of offspring and a new generation can be bred every two weeks, and 2. they only have 4 pairs of chromosomes, all of which are easily viewable and distinguishable using a light microscope. 3 of these are autosomal and 1 pair is sex-determining.

After relentless mating and inspecting, Morgan finally found an odd male fruitfly with white eyes (they're usually red). He then mated the white-eyed male with a red-eyed female. He was rewarded with a first generation (F1) of all red eyed offspring. Then Morgan bred the first generation, and found the classic Mendelian phenotype that was 3:1, 3 being red-eyed, 1 being white eyed. BUT he also noticed that ALL the females were red eyed and only half of the males were white-eyed, meaning that this trait must have been related to the fly's sex.

So in the end, Morgan not only proved that chromosomes are the location of Mendel's heritable factors, but he also indicated (I don't think it was stated explicitly) that genes located on sex chomosomes exhibit unique inheritance patterns.

I guess you could say that Morgan was a pretty 'fly' guy! (HAHA... sorry.)

Answer 2

Thomas Hunt Morgan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933. ... with his discovery of the white-eyed mutation in the fruit fly, Drosophila.

Answer 3

Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered the link trait inheritance.

Answer 4

he died in december 4,1945

Answer 5

No