An Essay on the "Rediscovery" of Mendel's Work Gregor Johann Mendel is widely considered as the founder of modern genetics as a result of his now famous pea plant experiments that were carried out between the years of 1856 and 1863. The experiments ultimately established the numerous rules of heredity that are referred to in genetics to this day (Nirenberg, n.d.). Additionally , he is known for coining the genetic terms "recessive" and "dominant" in an effort to refer to certain traits in the experiments, such as green peas being recessive and yellow ones dominant. His work was published in 1866 establishing the actions of "invisible" factors now known simply as genes in providing for visible traits in predictable ways. Mendel seemed to enjoy his accomplishments privately as his work was discovered three decades later by scientists conducting agricultural research. The scientists were: Erich Tschermak, Hugo de Vries, and Carl Correns who all independently verified Mendel's work leading to the "age of genetics" where we gained even more knowledge on genes and even DNA. (Nirenberg, n.d.). Hugo Marie de Vries was a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists who started studying hybridization. Through his studies, he was convinced that traits were inherited as independent components. In 1893, he collected data from the hairy and hairless species of Lychnis and found that crossing both species resulted in the production of all hairy hybrids. In the following year however, he described that the F2 generation resulted in a 2:1 ratio of hairy: hairless plants. On the 26th of March 1900, at the Académie des Sciences, de Vries presented his paper "On the law of segregation in hybrids" in which he described hybridization i... ... middle of paper ... ...ses of linkage and to observe that the four different phenotypes produced by a dihybrid cross as aforementioned must occur in an 9:3:3:1 ratio. Correns also implied that segregation was a result of meiosis (Moore, 2001). Ultimately, both scientists with further research and experiments, further proved Mendel's findings and even improved them allowing us to further understand genetics in a sense that we would not have been able to comprehend. Works Cited Gliboff, S. (1999). Gregor Mendel and the laws of evolution. History of Science 37: 217-228. Moore, R. (2001) . The "Rediscovery" of Mendel's Work . Website. Retrieved from http://www.cs.uml.edu Nirenberg, M. (n.d.). Gregor Mendel: The Father of Modern Genetics. Website. Retrieved from http://history.nih.gov/ Orel, V. (1996). Gregor Mendel: The First Geneticist. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zhao, Buyun. "Charles Darwin & Evolution." Charles Darwin & Evolution. Christ's College, 2009. Web. 04 May 2014.
Loewenberg, Bert J. "The Reaction of American Scientists to Darwinism." American Historical Review. 38 (1933): 687-701.
Bowler, Peter J. Evolution: The History of an Idea. London: University of California Press, 1989.
The major topic of this experiment was to examine two different crosses between Drosophila fruit flies and to determine how many flies of each phenotype were produced. Phenotype refers to an individual’s appearance, where as genotype refers to an individual’s genes. The basic law of genetics that was examined in this lab was formulated by a man often times called the “father of genetics,” Gregor Mendel. He determined that individuals have two alternate forms of a gene, referred to as two alleles. An individual can me homozygous dominant (two dominant alleles, AA), homozygous recessive, (two recessive alleles, aa), or heterozygous (one dominant and one recessive allele, Aa). There were tow particular crosses that took place in this experiment. The first cross-performed was Ebony Bodies versus Vestigle Wings, where Long wings are dominant over short wings and normal bodies are dominant over black bodies. The other cross that was performed was White versus Wild where red eyes in fruit flies are dominant over white eyes.
Anyone with even a moderate background in science has heard of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Since the publishing of his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, Darwin’s ideas have been debated by everyone from scientists to theologians to ordinary lay-people. Today, though there is still severe opposition, evolution is regarded as fact by most of the scientific community and Darwin’s book remains one of the most influential ever written.
Lennox, James. "Darwinism." Stanford University. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition). , 13 Aug. 2004. Web. 12 May 2014.
One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis or Modern Evolutionary Thought. Ernst Mayr. Harvard University Press, 1993.
For thousands of years 2, humans have been selecting the seeds of plants with certain desirable genetic traits to plant the following years crop. For years upon years, growers have identified and cultivated useful plant variants through selective breeding and environmental alterations. Corn, as it is known today, is nothing like it was a thousand years ago. Gregor Mendel, the "Father of Genetics", wrote his first major paper on genetics in 1865 where he puts into words wha...
Patterson, C.(1981). Prominent British Scientist Challenges Evolution Theory.(Videotape). Washington D.C.: American Museum of Natural History.
Genes are expected to give offspring hereditary similarities to the parent. However, this was not known and Gregory Mendel asked himself what was passed on by parents to their offspring that is the basis for similarity. Mendel would go on through experiments with pea plants to answer short questions. The answers were short as well as to say that the passing of characteristics from parents to the offspring is throug...
Darwin, Charles. From The Origin of Species. New York: P.F. Collier and Son Corporation, 1937. 71-86; 497-506.
Gregor Mendel, born as Johann Mendel, is considered to be one of the most significant historic scientist of all time. He was an Austrian scientist and monk and is best known as the “Father of Modern Genetics.” He founded the science of genetics and discovered many things that dealt with heredity that still applies to our world today. He is remembered for paving the way for scientists and future generations to come. Unfortunately, Mendel’s work went unnoticed until 16 years after his death and 34 years after he published his research. Though Mendel lay covered in his grave, his work would eventually be uncovered. Although Mendel was not there to see it,
Genetic testing has become very popular as technology has improved, and has opened many doors in the scientific community. Genetic testing first started in 1866 by a scientist known as, Gregor Mendel, when he published his work on pea plants. The rest was history after his eyes opening experiments on pea plants. However, like any other scientific discovery, it bought conflicts which caused major controversies and a large population disagreed with the concept of playing with the genetic codes of human beings. Playing God was the main argument that people argument that people had against genetics. genetic testing became one of the major conflicts conflicts to talk about, due to the fact that parents could now have the option of deciding if they
Gould, Stephen Jay. "Evolution as Fact and Theory." The Norton Mix. Editor Katie Hannah. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 110-119.
Many people build the road of to the DNA structure that it is known today as. Around 1868, Freidrich Miescher isolated something no one have ever seen before from the nuclei of cells during this time. He called the compound "nuclein," which is in today it called nucleic acid. Two years before this a Czech monk Gregor Mendel, was experimenting with peas and was able to show that certain traits within the peas, such as size or color, were inherited in different packages. Today these packages are now called genes.