Genetics Is The Study Of Heredity And The Variation Of Inherited Characteristics

The laws of inheritance were discovered by Gregor Mendel due to his experiments between 1856 and 1863. He was cross breeding garden peas and observing the characteristics of the resulting plants and the peas produced from the parent plants.

He observed dominance and segregation. Inheritance worked in numerical ratios and depended on pairs of factors inherited by the offspring from the parents. Each parent contributes one factor for each characteristic and certain traits are dominant and others are recessive.

The exact characteristics of the offspring depend on the combination of the factors inherited. One dominant factor paired with one recessive factor would ensure take up of the dominant trait, but it takes two recessive factors – one from each parent before a recessive trait would be inherited.

We now know these factors as genes – a term coined in 1909 by Wilhelm Johansson a Danish Botanist.