Significance of the Differences Between Mitosis and Meiosis Mendel used mathemat

Question

Significance of the Differences Between Mitosis and Meiosis Mendel used mathematics and experimentation to derive major principles that have helped us understand inheritance. His ideas were totally different than the explanation for passage of characteristics from parents to offspring that was common to his time. Discuss at least two of his principles in detail, providing examples. Describe how each principle contributes to genetic variability. Discuss the significance of Mendel’s discoveries to modern biology.

Explanation / Answer

Two most important laws by Mendel

The law of dominance states that a dominant trait is something that will always be observed and appear in the offspring. If the offspring gets one allele each from the parent and the phenotype characteristics of only one allele is shown, it is called dominant allele. Example that was performed was finding the phenotypic trait and characteristics of a plant. When a short plant with two short allele which is recessive was crossed with tall plants with two tall alleles, the offsprings produced were all tall because one Tall allele was present in each which is dominant.

It states that every pair of the allele is segregated to the daughter cells during the second division of meiosis independent of any other pair of allele. During the meiosis, allele pair segregates into daughter cell and it has no affect on the other allele pair. Hence the traits that are inherited by one gene is independent of the traits inherited by another gene as they are located on different chromosome.

Each of the principle contributes to the genetic variability because in the law of dominance it clearly states that the dominant characteristic is the one whose phenotypic characteristics is reflected in the offspring. The law of independent assortment also states that no matter what, the segregation of each allele is independent and hence is responsible for imparting separate characteristics.

Mendel has contributed a lot to modern biology by bringing out number of principles that helped in better understanding of genetics. He is considered to be father of genetics and he pioneered the understanding of how genes play a role in imparting genotypic and phenotypic characteristics. He also made us understand how each characteristics is represented by a gene and how the alleles segregate to give a variable characteristics.

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