AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Gregor Mendel studied inheritance of traits in pea plants. He proposed a model where pairs of “heritable elements, ” or genes, specified traits. Genes come in different versions, or alleles. A dominant allele hides a recessive allele and determines the organism’s appearance.

Detailed explanation-2: -The law of segregation states that every individual possesses two alleles and only one allele is passed on to the offspring. The law of independent assortment states that the inheritance of one pair of genes is independent of inheritance of another pair.

Detailed explanation-3: -Mendel was curious about how traits were transferred from one generation to the next, so he set out to understand the principles of heredity in the mid-1860s. Peas were a good model system, because he could easily control their fertilization by transferring pollen with a small paintbrush.

Detailed explanation-4: -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-5: -Mendel carried out his key experiments using the garden pea, Pisum sativum, as a model system. Pea plants make a convenient system for studies of inheritance, and they are still studied by some geneticists today.