Mendelian Genetics

A single garden pea seed contains the exact biological instructions required to construct an entire organism, dictating everything from the color of its flowers to the texture of its pod. Long before we could sequence DNA or image chromosomes, Gregor Mendel formulated the foundational laws of inheritance based on breeding experiments with the garden pea plant. By meticulously tracking mathematical patterns across generations of peas, he proved that heredity is not a nebulous blending of parental traits, but rather a rigid, quantifiable system of discrete information transfer. Understanding this system is the bedrock of modern biology.

Gregor Mendel's breeding experiments tracked seven distinct, easily observable phenotypic traits in pea plants, allowing him to quantify the patterns of heredity.
Gregor Mendel's breeding experiments tracked seven distinct, easily observable phenotypic traits in pea plants, allowing him to quantify the patterns of heredity.