MENDEL’S
EXPERIMENTS
MENDEL’S EXPERIMENTS
• Mendelworked with the common garden pea plant,
Pisum sativum.
• He chose the pea plant for at least three reasons:
• The garden pea was easy to cultivate and had a relatively
short life cycle.
• Theplant had discontinuous characteristics such as
flower color and pea texture.
• In
part because of its anatomy, pollination of the plant
was easy to control.
Characteristics observed by
Mendel
F1 Generation
F2 Generation
LAW OF SEGREGATION
•Agamete receives
only one allele from
the pair of alleles
an organism
possesses;
fertilization
reestablishes the
double number.
Law of Dominance
This law states that in a pair of contrasting traits (alleles), one
trait (dominant) will mask the other (recessive) in the offspring's
phenotype (observable characteristics).
Law of Independent
Assortment
• Membersof one gene pair segregate independently
from other gene pairs during gamete formation
Alternatives to Dominance
and Recessiveness
1) two types of “units” or alleles exist for every gene
2) alleles maintain their integrity in each generation in
the presence of the dominant allele, the recessive
allele is hidden, with no contribution to the
phenotype.
3) Therefore, recessive alleles can be “carried” and not
expressed by individuals.
4) Such heterozygous individuals are sometimes
referred to as “carriers.”
• Incomplete Dominance
• Codominance
• Multiple Alleles
• Sex-Linked Traits
• Epistasis
Incomplete Dominance
Codominance
•A variation on incomplete dominance is codominance,
in which both alleles for the same characteristic are
simultaneously expressed in the heterozygote.
• Anexample of codominance occurs in the ABO blood
groups of humans.
• TheA and B alleles are expressed in the form of A or B
molecules present on the surface of red blood cells.
• Homozygotes (IAIA and IBIB) express either the A or the
B phenotype, and heterozygotes (IAIB) express both
phenotypes equally.
• The IAIB individual has blood type AB.
Multiple Alleles
• Anexample of multiple alleles is the ABO blood-type
system in humans.
• There are three alleles circulating in the population
• IA allele codes for A molecules on the red blood cells
• IB
allele codes for B molecules on the surface of red
blood cells
•i allele codes for no molecules on the red blood cells
• Although there are three alleles present in a
population, each individual only gets two of the alleles
from their parents
Sex-Linked Traits
• In
addition to 22 homologous pairs of autosomes,
human females have a homologous pair of X
chromosomes, whereas human males have an XY
chromosome pair.
• Although the Y chromosome contains a small region of
similarity to the X chromosome so that they can pair
during meiosis, the Y chromosome is much shorter and
contains fewer genes.
• When a gene being examined is present on the X, but
not the Y, chromosome, it is X-linked.
• Eye color in Drosophila, the common fruit fly, was the
first X-linked trait to be identified
• ThomasHunt Morgan mapped this trait to the X
chromosome in 1910
• Drosophilamales have an XY chromosome pair, and
females are XX
• In
flies the wild-type eye color is red (XW) and is
dominant to white eye color (Xw)
• Malesare said to be hemizygous, in that they have
only one allele for any X-linked characteristic
• Drosophila
males lack the white gene on the Y
chromosome; that is, their genotype can only be XWY
or XwY
• females
have two allele copies of this gene and can be
XWXW, XWXw, or XwXw.