UNDERSTANDING OF GENETICS

• MENDEL:

  • He was JUST a MONK
• MENDEL'S BREEDING EXPERIMENTS:

  • Mid 19th century- PEA plant experiments
  • People didn't understand INHERITANCE (thought characteristics were BLENDED during INHERITANCE
• WHAT DID HIS EXPERIMENT SHOW?

  • Characteristics are not BLENDED during INHERITANCE
  • Characteristics- determined by inherited UNITS (do not CHANGE when passed onto DESCENDANTS). We know these UNITS as GENES
  • Characteristics MASK and REAPPEAR in later generations (RECESSIVE alleles)
• Were his results accepted?

  • He published his results in a scientific PAPER
  • However, people still thought that the CHARACTERISTICS were BLENDED
  • They didn't understand his MAJOR discovery, so it was FORGOTTEN
• LATE 1800S:

  • CHROMOSOME behaviour during CELL division
  • Mendel's WORK was REDISCOVERED
  • Early 1900s -> Mendel's UNITS behaved SIMILARLY to CHROMOSOMES
  • The UNITS are now called GENES (found on CHROMOSOMES)
• MID 1900s

  • Structure of DNA function of GENES
  • "UNITS are now GENES"