Question

State the three Mendel's laws of inheritance.

Answer 1

Hint: Mendel experiments showed that plants inherited traits that are dominant and offsprings derive one factor from each parent. The halved chromosomes in parents segregate independently of the associated factor or genes.

Complete answer: Gregor Mendel, through his work on pea plants, discovered the laws of inheritance. He investigated that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units, one from each parent. Mendel found that the segregation of parental genes and their appearance in the offspring as dominant or recessive traits.
Gregor Mendel conducted pea plant experiments to prove that plants inherited traits from parents.
He gave three laws of inheritance:
1. Law of dominance – In the heterozygous condition, the allele which is dominated over other acquired alleles, which is known as a dominant trait, is only expressed in the phenotype.
2. Law of independent assortment – The pair of alleles segregates independently of other pairs of a trait during gamete formation.
3. Law of segregation – As the offsprings acquire one allele from each parent shows that the alleles are segregated during gamete formation.

Note: The universally accepted law is the law of segregation as there are no limitations compared to the other two laws. Dominance fails in certain conditions like co-dominance and the independent assortment is sometimes not seen, as some genes during gamete formation carry new traits.