Chapter 14 Notes Flashcards
Mendel discovered the
basic principles of heredity by breeding garden peas in carefully planned experiments
Advantages of pea plants for genetic study
- There are many varieties with distinct heritable features, or characters (such as flower color); character variants (such as purple or white flowers) are called traits
- Mating can be controlled (via cross pollination)
- Each flower has sperm-producing organs (stamens) and an egg-producing organ (carpel)
- Cross-pollination (fertilization between different plants) involves dusting one plant with pollen from another
Mendel chose to track only those characters that occurred in
two distinct alternative forms.
He also used varieties that were true-breeding
(plants that produce offspring of the same variety when they self-pollinate)
In a typical experiment, Mendel mated two contrasting, true-breeding varieties, a process called
hybridization
The true-breeding parents are the
P generation
The hybrid offspring of the P generation are called the
F1 generation
When F1 individuals self-pollinate or cross- pollinate with other F1 hybrids, the
F2 generation is produced
When Mendel crossed contrasting, true-breeding white- and purple-flowered pea plants,
all of the F1 hybrids were purple
When Mendel crossed the F1 hybrids,
many of the F2 plants had purple flowers, but some had white
Mendel discovered a ratio of about
three to one, purple to white flowers, in the F2 generation
Mendel reasoned that
only the purple flower factor was affecting flower color in the F1 hybrids
Mendel called the purple flower color
a dominant trait and the white flower color a recessive trait
The factor for white flowers was not diluted or destroyed because
it reappeared in the F2 generation
Mendel observed the same pattern of inheritance in
six other pea plant characters, each represented by two traits
What Mendel called a “heritable factor” is what we now call
a gene
Alternative versions of genes account for variations in inherited characters
For example, the gene for flower color in pea plants exists in two versions, one for purple flowers and the other for white flowers
These alternative versions of a gene are now called
alleles
Each gene resides at a
specific locus on a specific chromosome
For each character, an organism inherits two alleles, one from each parent.
Mendel made this deduction without knowing about the role of chromosomes
The two alleles at a particular locus may be
identical, as in the true-breeding plants of Mendel’s P generation
Alternatively, the two alleles at a locus may
differ, as in the F1 hybrids
If the two alleles at a locus differ, then one (the dominant allele) determines the
organism’s appearance, and the other (the recessive allele) has no noticeable effect on appearance
-In the flower-color example, the F1 plants had purple flowers because the allele for that trait is dominant
(now known as the law of segregation):
the two alleles for a heritable character separate (segregate) during gamete formation and end up in different gametes