Gregor Mendel of Mendelian inheritance. Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. Taking seed color as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred their offspring always produced yellow seeds. However, in the next generation, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1 green to 3 yellow. To explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms “recessive” and “dominant” in reference to certain traits. (In the preceding example, the green trait, which seems to have vanished in
Adoption detective their parents is information that has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. The biological science of genetics, which began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth century, seeks to understand the process of inheritance and the physical basis for heredity in our DNA. What is known about human traits inherited through patients' families can save their lives—that is why gathering a person's complete and accurate medical family history is extremely important even as genetic medicine continues to explain more diseases. Many advances in biological medical science are anticipated in the