MENDEL’S LAWS OF INHERITANCE
Mendel’s analysis of 34 pea plant subspecies to determine how and when traits are passed down from parents to offspring is his most famous work. He studied pea plants (Pisum sativum) because they have many variations. Also, each plant has both a stamen and stigma – the male and female reproductive parts of a plant. Having both means that the pea plant can self-pollinate or cross-pollinate.
To experiment with different variations of genetics, Mendel cross-pollinated some of the pea plants. This meant transferring the pollen of one plant, containing male reproductive cells, onto the stigma of another. As part of his experiments he studied seven traits, such as the shape and colour of flowers and seeds. When the parents of one plant had two separate flower colours, only one colour was present in the offspring. But when the offspring self-pollinated, the trait that didn’t present in them could appear in their offspring. Mendel discovered this was made possible by recessive genes. He proposed that only dominant genes were visible in the offspring, but that recessive genes could be passed through generations.