Genetics Genetics Genetics is a branch of biology concerned with the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms. Gregor Mendel, a scientist and Augustinian friar, discovered genetics in the late 19th-century. Mendel studied "trait inheritance", patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring. He observed that organisms (pea plants) inherit traits by way of discrete "units of inheritance". This term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene. Trait inheritance and molecular inheritance mechanisms of genes are still primary principles of genetics in the 21st century, but
Gregor Mendel Institute of the GMI is Magnus Nordborg. Gregor Mendel Institute The Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) is a basic research institute in the field of molecular plant biology founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2000 and located at the Vienna Biocenter. It is named after Gregor Mendel, the "father of genetics", who studied at the University of Vienna in the middle of the 19th century. Research at the GMI covers aspects of molecular genetics, including basic mechanisms of epigenetics, population genetics, chromosome biology, developmental biology, stress signal transduction and plant pathogens. "Arabidopsis thaliana" is the primary