Answer to Question #228271 in English for Eugine

Question

Gregor Mendel used garden peas to deduce the principle of segregation and the principle of independent assortment. Explain the experiment that lead to the principle of segregation and describe the conclusion from his monohybrid experiments.

Answer 1

Gregor Mendel cross pollinated the selected pea plants by removing the anthers from one blossom and dusting pollen from another plant onto the flower to prevent self-fertilization. To begin, he cross-fertilized plants with similar features to guarantee that they were true-breeding, providing a strong baseline for the study. Cross-pollination between plants with distinct traits, such as green seed pods and yellow seed pods, was the next step.

The P (Parental) generation is the first generation of plants. The F1 (Filial generation) progeny were then self-fertilized to produce the F2 generation. This self-fertilization proceeded for many generations until the qualities were entrenched. The F1 generation all had the Gg combination and so were all green pod variants although, importantly, all had a 50% chance of passing on the recessive g allele to the next generation. Offspring with a dominant G gene will always have green pods with only the offspring containing the gg combination having yellow pods. This explains why just a fifth of the F2 generation had yellow pods, according to Mendel. However, all but one quarter of the population had at least one 'g' allele, which would be handed on down the generations. The Mendel Pea Experiment was a truly groundbreaking research project. The Law of Segregation served as the foundation for genetic science.