AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Gregor Mendel, through his work on pea plants, discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance. He deduced that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units, one from each parent. Mendel tracked the segregation of parental genes and their appearance in the offspring as dominant or recessive traits.

Detailed explanation-2: -By experimenting with pea plant breeding, Mendel developed three principles of inheritance that described the transmission of genetic traits, before anyone knew genes existed. Mendel’s insight greatly expanded the understanding of genetic inheritance, and led to the development of new experimental methods.

Detailed explanation-3: -Mendel concluded that different traits are inherited independently of each other, there is no relationship between them. This means that the inheritance pattern of one trait will not affect the inheritance pattern of another (as long as the genes are not linked).

Detailed explanation-4: -Mendel’s most important contribution to the modern understanding of biology is that hereditary information comes in discrete units. He deduced from his experiments that each character is controlled by discrete units and they are paired, each one inherited from a parent.

Detailed explanation-5: -He formulated several basic genetic laws, including the law of segregation, the law of dominance, and the law of independent assortment, in what became known as Mendelian inheritance.