BB101-Spring 2024-2025-Lecture 14 Sreelaja Nair

Gregor Mendel and the Pea plant

Male Female

• Plants can self-fertilize or cross-fertilize

• Can take pollen from anther of one flower and dust it on the stigma of another flower
• Technical advantage for experimental mating (crossing) of plants
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Gregor Mendel and the Pea plant

Self or cross-fertilize F1 generation

The result was the same for the reciprocal cross, which involved the transfer of
pollen from purple flowers to white flowers
Figure 14.2 of Campbell’s Biology: a global approach
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Gregor Mendel and the Pea plant

• Mendel chose to track only those characters that occurred in two distinct, alternative
forms, such as purple or white flower color
• He started his experiments with varieties that, over many generations of self-pollination,
had produced only the same variety as the parent plant = true breeding
• The mating, or cross-pollinating (crossing) of two true-breeding varieties is called
hybridization
• The true-breeding parents are referred to as the P generation (parental generation), and
their hybrid offspring are the F1 generation (first filial generation, the word filial from the
Latin word for “son”).
• Allowing these F1 hybrids to self-pollinate (or to cross-pollinate with other F1 hybrids)
produces an F2 generation (second filial generation).

• Mendel’s quantitative analysis of the F2 plants from thousands of genetic crosses like
these allowed him to deduce two fundamental principles of heredity, which have come
to be called the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment
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Law of Segregation
Crossed two true-breeding plants that each
produce Purple or White flowers

When seeds from F1 generation grew into

plants, all plants produced Purple flowers.
What happened to the information to
produce White flowers?

When F1 generation self or cross-fertilized

to produce seeds and when those seeds
grew into plants, some of F2 plants
produced White flowers

White flowers in F2 plants did not appear randomly, they appeared in a

ratio of 3:1 (3 purple flower plants:1 White flower plant)
Figure 14.3 of Campbell’s Biology: a global approach
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Law of Segregation
• Mendel reasoned that the heritable factor for white flowers did not disappear in the F1
plants but was somehow hidden, or masked, when the purple-flower factor was
present.
• In Mendel’s terminology, purple flower color is a dominant trait, and white flower color is
a recessive trait.
• The reappearance of white-flowered plants in the F2 generation was evidence that the
heritable factor causing white flowers had not been diluted or destroyed by coexisting
with the purple-flower factor in the F1 hybrids.
• Instead, it had been hidden when in the presence of the purple flower factor.
• Mendel observed the same pattern of inheritance in six other characters, each
represented by two distinctly different traits
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Law of Segregation

1. Alternative versions of genes account for

variations in inherited characters.
2. For each character, an organism inherits two
copies (that is, two alleles) of a gene, one
from each parent.
3. If the two alleles at a locus differ, then one,
the dominant allele, determines the
organism’s appearance; the other, the
recessive allele, has no noticeable effect on
the organism’s appearance.
4. Law of segregation, states that the two
alleles for a heritable character segregate
(separate from each other) during gamete
formation and end up in different gametes.

Table 14.1 of Campbell’s Biology: a global approach

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Law of Segregation

• Alleles = alternative versions of a gene

• For a diploid cell at metaphase, there will be 4 alleles of a gene - one on
each sister chromatid
• A haploid gamete has one chromatid at the end of meiosis = one allele
• When two haploid gametes fuse (fertilization) - embryo gets two alleles,
one from each gamete
Figure 14.4 of Campbell’s Biology: a global approach
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Law of Segregation
• Each true breeding P plant has one allele of the gene, either P
or p. Each P plant has two copies of the allele (PP or pp) as it is
a diploid
• Each P plant produces one type of haploid gamete, either,
Purple allele gamete (P) or White allele gamete (p)

• When gametes from two P plants fuse, they can only form one
diploid combination in F1 upon fertilization: Pp
• The cross-pollinated F1 plant has two alleles P and p, but P is
dominant and therefore F1 plant has Purple flowers
• Each F1 plant produces two types of gametes: P and p =
segregation

• When gametes of F1 plants fuse (self or cross-fertilization), they

can form three types of diploid combinations in F2: PP or Pp or
pp.
• PP = Purple flower F2 plant = like one type of P generation
• Pp = Purple flower F2 plant = like the F1 generation
• pp = White flower F2 plant = like the second type of P
generation, reappearing after skipping one generation

Figure 14.5 of Campbell’s Biology: a global approach

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Law of Segregation
• Phenotype = organism’s
appearance or observable traits
• Genotype = genetic makeup or
allele combinations
• Phenotype and Genotype ratios are
mathematically predictable
• Mendel inferred these without
knowing concepts of chromosomes
or genes or meiosis or mitosis
• Homozygous inbreeding =
offsprings will have genotype and
phenotype of parent
• Heterozygous breeding = offsprings
will have a mix of parents and
grandparents genotype and
phenotype

If you only know phenotype (e.g. purple flowers), it is impossible to be sure of the
genotype (can be PP or Pp). Need to do a Test cross with a known true breeding PP and/
or pp genotype and track offspring for multiple generations
Figure 14.6 of Campbell’s Biology: a global approach
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Examples of monogenic traits in humans - follows Law of Segregation

Disease examples: Sickle cell, cystic

fibrosis, Duchenne muscular
dystrophy, Hemophilia A and B,
Retinitis Pigmentosa, β‐Thalassemia
and many more….

Many traits such as ring and index

finger length, hand clasping etc
can also be influenced by
exposure to hormones and other
factors as embryos develop and
thus are not strictly monogenic.

PMID: 34515378, https://doi.org/10.14738/jbemi.95.13335