High School Biology/Mendel's Investigations

In 1800’s, an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel performed breeding experiment with pea plants in his garden. He observed the visible traits (phenotype) of the plants in every generation and derived some general patterns of inheritance. Some of the traits that he observed include the flower color, the surface of the peas, and the height of the plant. By performing cross-breed among the pea plants with different phenotype, he concluded that some genes may remain hidden under another one. Now the genes that remain hidden are known as recessive genes, while the ones expressed over the other are called dominant genes. This discovery of recessive and dominant genes revealed the general rule of inheritance which is now called Mendelian Inheritance.

This material was adapted from the original CK-12 book that can be found here. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License