The Importance of Mendel’s Laws in Modern Genetics

The Importance of Mendel’s Laws in Modern Genetics

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Human genome is like an intricate library that stores vast volumes of life information. The preservation and passage of genetic books to future generation is one of the primary tasks of human genome.

In the late 19th century not too long after the library of Congress was built in the United States, Gregor Mendel, an Austrian teacher and abbot, made a keen observation in the garden of a monastery at Brno. After testing and breeding 28,000 pea plants, Mendel discovered the mathematic pattern of describing how parents pass on their traits to the offspring. This finding laid a foundation for Modern Genetics, although we can image that Mendel did not even know what constituted the genetic building block at the time.

About a century later, the work of Francis Crick and James Watson led to the discovery of DNA as genetic code carrier.1 Our genetic makeup comprises 3 billion base pairs of DNA molecules and the variations of DNA sequences lead to the diversity and individual uniqueness among the life on earth. However, within this vast library of genetic codes, errors will inevitably occur, like a misplaced book, resulting in diseases or increased vulnerability to harmful insults. Unfortunately, some genetic defects can pass on to affect future generations.

Completed in 2003, the Human Genome Project is an extraordinary international scientific collaboration to decipher human genetic code. The decoding of human DNA sequence provides us a sketch of the entire human genome information. Today scientists can determine the complete DNA sequences of 25,000 human genes and access this information with a simple 30 second search. Using this genetic reference, we will advance our kno...

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...overed more than a hundred years ago still helps doctors understand how the gene transmits from shelf to shelf or from generation to generation. In addition, it helps scientist to zero in on defected genes. Analogue to the Dewey Decimal System, the Laws of Mendel accurately predicts a hereditary pattern of a genetic disease or trait even in the days of e-library.

Reference

1. Watson J.D., Crick F.H. “A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. 1953.” Nature 421 (2003): 397-398.

2. Connelly, Joel. "Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, and Participatory". Institute for Systems Biology . 2/16/10 .

3. Jarry J., et al. "A Novel Autosomal Recessive Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy with Quadriceps Atrophy Maps to 11p13-p12." Brain 130 (2007): 368-380.