Question

Which of the following is the major discovery of William Bateson?
a. Discovered linkage
b. Discovered complementary of genes
c. Coined the term Genetics
d. All of the above.

Answer 1

Hint: William Bateson was an English biologist who studied inheritance and heredity during his life span 8 August 1861 to 8 February 1926. He also worked with Punnett on some of the projects related to inheritance of genes with each other.

Complete answer:
William Bateson was a great English biologist. He studied natural sciences in his College. He took embryology as his subject for his further studies. In the US, he developed interest in vertebrate origin and turned his career from morphology to evolution and came back to England and started his research at St John’s on variation and heredity.

His most of the research work was published before 1900, he studied variation and heredity according to Charles Darwin and collected different information and he noticed different patterns in inheritance of genes. In his publications he coined the term “Genetics” which is the study of inheritance and variation patterns among genes and different organisms.

He also observed that genes are not inherited as individual units from parents to off-springs. They follow a specific pattern and then he concludes his research by giving the idea of linkage of genes with another biologist Punnett. And present Mendel’s laws to the English scientist society.

He also explained the presence of complementary genes in the genome of different organisms. He explained that some genes are present at different positions but they communicate with each other to give a single character in combination with each other.
So, we can conclude that William Bateson discovered linkage of genes, discovered complementary genes and introduced the term Genetics.

Hence, The correct answer is option (D).

Note: William Bateson discovered various facts about embryonic development of humans as well as other animals. He got the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his contribution on the genes study in 1995. He talked about a mutation called homeotic mutations, in which the expected body part is replaced by another body part.