Friday, July 17, 2020

GENETICS 2

INHERITANCE OF ONE GENE (MONOHYBRID CROSS)

Mendel crossed tall and dwarf pea plant and collected the seeds from them.

Seeds were used to generate plants of first generation (F1 or Filial progeny). 

Mendel observed that all the first generation plants were tall, none of them were dwarf.


He made similar observations for the other pairs of traits.



 Conclusion- F1 generation resembled either one of the parents

2nd generation(f2 generation) -- He then self-pollinated the tall F1 plants -- Out of all, ¼th were dwarf and 3/4th were tall.


Similar results were obtained for other traits too. 


In F2 generation, both the traits were expressed in proportion of 3:1. 

Dominant trait in F2 is about thrice of the recessive from. 

These contrasting traits did not show any blending at either F1 or F2 stage.


conclusion -- something was being stably passed from one generation to the other. He named it ‘factors’ which are now called as ‘genes’.

Gene is the unit of inheritance.

 It contains information that is required to express a particular trait in an organism. 

Genes which code for a pair of contrasting traits are known as ‘alleles’. They are slightly different for a same gene.


For representing traits using alphabetical symbols, capital letter is used for the trait expressed at F1 generation  and small letter is used for the other one.

For example: T for tall trait

t for dwarf.

T and t are alleles of each other. Pair of alleles for height in the plants are TT, Tt and tt.

TT and tt are homozygous.

 TT and tt are called genotype of the plant while the description terms tall and dwarf are phenotype

Genotype- gene composition (allele coposition)

Phenotype- physical character/ appearance.

Tt represents heterozygous.


Punnett squares

The production of gametes by the parents, formation of zygotes can be easily understood by Punnett square.

 It was given by British geneticist RC Punnett. 

It is a graphical representation used to calculate probability of all possible genotypes of offspring in a genetic cross

It is typically used for monohybrid cross conducted by Mendel between true-breeding tall plants and true-breeding dwarf plants

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