and Fruit Flies
The basic foundation of modern genetics was led by Gregor Mendel (Corcos,
1993). Mendel was not the first to experiment with heredity, and our Lyman
Briggs biology class will not be the last to deal with genetics. Genetics is
the science of heredity. In our lab, we had three main objectives. First, we
evaluated our data on monohybrid and dihybrid corn cross seed counts against
Mendel's theoretical expectations of independent assortment and the segregation
of alleles. Next, we used the Hardy-Weinberg Theorem to provide a theoretically
expected value for allele frequencies for single human gene traits. Lastly, we
dealt with Drosophila melanogaster and we examined red and white eye alleles to
determine if this gene is sex-linked or autosomal.
During the mid 1800's Mendel bred garden peas to study inheritance. He
choose these plants because of their well defined characteristics and the
ability to be grown and crossed (Campbell, 1996). Mendel wanted to know the
genetic basis for variation among individuals and what accounted for the
transmission of traits from generation to generation. Mendel followed traits
for the P generation, F1 generation, and F2 generation. The P generation is the
original true-breeding parents. Their hybrid offspring is the F1 generation,
the first filial. The F2 generation is the second filial and is the self-
pollination of the F1 hybrids. It was predominantly his research on the F2
generation that led to Mendel's Law of Segregation and Law of Independent
Assortment (Campbell, 1996).
Mendel's Law of Segregation states that alleles sort into separate
gametes. He formed this through performing monohybrid crosses. The F2
generation will have a 3:1 phenotypic ratio. By considering more than one trait
Mendel formed his Law of Independent Assortment. He questioned whether traits
were inherited independently or dependently. By... [continues]
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