Gregor Mendel, What did he discover?

Answer 1

Mendel was born into a German-speaking family in Hynčice, Austrian Silesia, Austria (now Czech Republic), and was baptized two days later. He was the son of Anton and Rosine Mendel and had one elder and also a younger sister. During his childhood, Mendel worked as a gardener, studied beekeeping, and as a young man attended the Philosophical Institute in Olomouc. Upon recommendation of his physics teacher Friedrich Franz, he entered the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno in 1843. Born Johann Mendel, he took the name Gregor upon entering monastic life. In 1851 he was sent to the University of Vienna to study, returning to his abbey in 1853 as a teacher, principally of physics.

Gregor Mendel, who is known as the "father of modern genetics", was inspired by both his professors at university and his colleagues at the monastery to study variation in plants, and he conducted his study in the monastery's garden. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 29,000 pea plants (i.e. Pisum sativum). This study showed that one in four pea plants had purebred recessive alleles, two out of four were hybrid and one out of four were purebred dominant. His experiments brought forth two generalisations which later became known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.


Gregor Johann Mendel - memorial plaque in OlomoucMendel read his paper, "Experiments on Plant Hybridization", at two meetings of the Natural History Society of Brünn in Moravia in 1865. When Mendel's paper was published in 1866 in Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn,[2] it had little impact and was cited about three times over the next thirty-five years. His paper received plenty of criticism at the time, but is now considered a seminal work.

After Mendel completed his work with peas, he turned to experimenting with honeybees, to extend his work to animals. He produced a hybrid strain (so vicious they were destroyed), but failed to generate a clear picture of their heredity because of the difficulties in controlling mating behaviours of queen bees.

Elevated as abbot in 1868, his scientific work largely ended as Mendel became consumed with his increased administrative responsibilities, especially a dispute with the civil government over their attempt to impose special taxes on religious institutions.[3]

At first Mendel's work was rejected (and it was not widely accepted until after he died). The common belief at the time was that pangenes were responsible for inheritance. Even Darwin's theory of evolution used pangenesis instead of Mendel's model of inheritance. The modern synthesis uses Mendelian genetics.

Mendel died on January 6, 1884, in Brno, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic), from chronic nephritis.


Rediscovery of Mendel's work

Dominant and recessive phenotypes. (1) Parental generation. (2) F1 generation. (3) F2 generation.It was not until the early 20th century that the importance of his ideas was realized. In 1900, his work was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns. Though Erich von Tschermak was originally also credited with rediscovery, this is no longer accepted because he did not understand Mendel's laws.[citation needed] Mendel's results were quickly replicated, and genetic linkage quickly worked out. Biologists flocked to the theory, even though it was not yet applicable to many phenomena, it sought to give a genotype understanding of heredity which they felt was lacking in previous studies of heredity which focused on phenotypic approaches. Most prominent of these latter approaches was the biometric school of Karl Pearson and W.F.R. Weldon, which was based heavily on statistical studies of phenotype variation. The strongest opposition to this school came from William Bateson, who perhaps did the most in the early days of publicising the benefits of Mendel's theory (the word "genetics", and much of the discipline's other terminology, originated with Bateson). This debate between the biometricians and the Mendelians was extremely vigorous in the first two decades of the twentieth century, with the biometricians claiming statistical and mathematical rigor, whereas the Mendelians claimed a better understanding of biology. In the end, the two approaches were combined as the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, especially by work conducted by R. A. Fisher as early as 1918.

Mendel's experimental results have later been the object of considerable dispute. Fisher analyzed the results of the F1 (first filial) ratio and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1.[4] Only a few would accuse Mendel of scientific malpractice or call it a scientific fraud — reproduction of his experiments has demonstrated the validity of his hypothesis — however, the results have continued to be a mystery for many, though it is often cited as an example of confirmation bias. This might arise if he detected an approximate 3 to 1 ratio early in his experiments with a small sample size, and continued collecting more data until the results conformed more nearly to an exact ratio. It is sometimes suggested that he may have censored his results, and that his seven traits each occur on a separate chromosome pair, an extremely unlikely occurrence if they were chosen at random. In fact, the genes Mendel studied occurred in only four linkage groups, and only one gene pair (out of 21 possible) is close enough to show segregation distortion; this is not a pair that Mendel studied.

The standard botanical author abbreviation Mendel is applied to species he described

Answer 2

There is a good article here
http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1324/

What particularly fascinated Gregor Mendel was the way in which the plants handed on their characteristics to the next generation. 'What could happen', he thought, 'if I crossed a white-flowered plant with a red-flowered? Would the next generation have red flowers or white? What if I crossed a tall plant with a short one? What height would the offspring be?'

As Mendel performed these experiments and carefully analyzed the results, he realized that he had discovered some fundamental laws concerning inheritance. Greatly excited, he published his findings in a scientific journal—but the scientific world ignored Mendel’s work completely. Discouraged, he abandoned his research. When he died in 1884, Mendel had no idea that 20 years later, he would have become world famous as the founder of a new science. Mendel’s work is now regarded as the beginning of the science of genetics, the study of inheritance.

Mendel published his findings in the late 1860s at just the time when Darwin’s theory was becoming immensely popular. Mendel published in a reputable journal and his paper was widely circulated and certainly known about. Yet it was not until 1900, 16 years after Mendel’s death, that the work was rediscovered and its importance realized.
Why ignored?

Why were such vital discoveries ignored? The answer almost certainly is that they conflicted with Darwin’s theory of evolution. This is seldom admitted today, yet it is still true that what Mendel discovered disproved one of Darwin’s most important assumptions. This is demonstrated by the fact that after Mendel’s work was rediscovered, Darwinian evolution suffered a temporary eclipse. After a while, evolutionary thinking re-emerged in a slightly different form which was said to be quite consistent with Mendel’s genetics. As we shall see, however, the two are not consistent and both cannot be true.

Answer 3

The Great Gregor Mendel discovered inherited traits which are when you get some characteristics from both parents and they get some traits from their parents and so one. He did this by studying peas and he had some plants that were small and some that were tall and he cross bred them and he found that the minority ( four out of sixteen pods had the "small" gene for example) were small but most were tall.

Answer 4

Whar happened when a tall pea and a short pea were crossed, blue-eyed people married brown-eyed people etc.
How many tall, short, medium peas resulted. Same with the next generation.(tall, short etc.)
Resulting table = Mendel's Law.

Answer 5

Law of heredity

Answer 6

that 1/4 of the pea plants displayed recessive characteristics

Answer 7

an understanding of basic genetics and hereditery trends

Answer 8

Why some peas went wrinkly and others didn't ...

Answer 9

He did pioneering work on genetics.

Answer 10

he is the father of genetics....gave 4 basic laws of genetics....
law of heredity,law of independent assortment,law of dominance,law of saggregation of characters..............he actually discovered "genes" nd called them "factors".