Mendelian inheritance

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Mendelian inheritance is a set of rules about genetic inheritance.

Gregor Mendel, father of modern genetics.

The basic rules of genetics were first discovered by a monk named Gregor Mendel in the 1850s, and published in 1866. For thousands of years, people had noticed how traits are inherited from parents to their children. However, Mendel's work was different because he did experiments on plants, and designed those experiments very carefully.[1]


Mendelian Genetics[change | change source]

Limitations[change | change source]

Mendel's laws apply widely, but not to all living things. They apply to any organism which is diploid (has two paired sets of chromosomes) and which engages in sexual reproduction. They would not apply to bacteria, for example, or to asexual reproduction. They do apply to the great majority of plants and animals.

Mendel's laws[change | change source]

Mendel explained the results of his experiment using two scientific laws:[2]

  • 1. Factors, later called genes, normally occur in pairs in ordinary body cells, yet separate during the formation of sex cells. This happens in meiosis, the production of gametes. Of each pair of chromosomes, a gamete only gets one.
    The factors (genes) determine the organism's traits, and are inherited from its parents. As the pair of chromosomes separate, each gamete only receives one of each factor. This Mendel called the Law of segregation.
    • Mendel also noted that versions of a gene could be either dominant or recessive. We call those different versions alleles.
  • 2. Alleles of different genes separate independently of one another when gametes are formed. This he called the Law of independent assortment. So Mendel thought that different traits are inherited independently of one another.
    • The second law is only true if the genes are not on the same chromosome. If they are, then they are linked to each other. This was the next great discovery after Mendel: that genes were carried on chromosomes. The closer they were on the chromosomes, the less likely was crossing over between them.[3]


Consequences[change | change source]

  1. When the chromosome pairs are separated in a gamete, they are randomly segregated. A gamete might have any proportion from 100% maternally derived to 100% paternally derived chromosomes.[5]
  2. In crossing-over, sections are exchanged between pairs of chromosomes during meiosis. This increases the number of genetically different individuals in a population, which is important in evolution.
  3. As a consequence of 1 & 2, except for identical twins, no two siblings have identical genetics.

Diagammatic examples[change | change source]

  • The ratios in the diagrams below are statistical predictions. In a large number of crosses, the numbers of offspring with these features will approximate to the ratios given.
Figure 1: Dominant and recessive phenotypes.
(1) Parental generation. (2) F1 generation. (3) F2 generation. Dominant (red) and recessive (white) phenotype look alike in the F1 generation and show a 3:1 ratio in the F2 generation

References[change | change source]

  1. Weiling F. 1991. Historical study: Johann Gregor Mendel 1822–1884. American Journal of Medical Genetics 40, 1–25
  3. Sturtevant A.H. 1965. A history of genetics. Harper & Row N.Y. Chapters 5 & 6.
  4. Olby, Robert 1985. Origins of Mendelism. 2nd ed, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-62591-5
  5. Of course, in a population of gametes the average proportion would be the same maternal as paternal chromosomes.