Judith Han AP Bio Ch.

14-15 Essay #1

Mendel reached several conclusions through his work on the inheritance of characteristics on peas. He discovered that the inheritance of traits is determined by units that are passed on to descendants and these units are now called genes. He also found that each individual inherits an allele from each parent for each trait. When Mendel crossed a purple flower pea plant and a white flower pea plant, he saw that the F1 generation produced all purple flower plants. When two of these F1 plants were crossed, the white flower color appeared again in the F2 generation. Mendel concluded that a trait may not show up in an individual but it can still be passed on to the next generation. From Mendels conclusions come two laws. These laws are the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment. The law of segregation states that for any particular trait, the pair of alleles of each parent separate and only one allele is passed down from each parent on to the offspring. The law of independent assortment states that different pairs of alleles are passed on to the offspring independently of each other. This allows there to be new combinations of genes in the offspring that are not seen in the parents. Although Mendel made opened the way to modern genetics, there were exceptions that deviate from his conclusions that he did not know of. Autosomal linkage is one of these exceptions. Autosomal linkage refers to when genes are located on the same chromosome and therefore they usually show up together in the offspring. However during meiosis, recombination occurs and this can split up the two alleles inherited from each parent and which results in recombinant types. The closer the genes are on the chromosome, the fewer amount of recombinants there will be in the offspring and the other way around. This is because recombination is less likely to split up the two genes if there isnt much space between the genes for there to split. Sex-linked or X-linked inheritance is another exception to Mendels conclusion. Sex-linked inheritance because genes that can be found on the X chromosome.

Judith Han AP Bio Ch. 14-15 Essay #1

Males have a Y chromosome without the same genetic information as an X chromosome. The male offspring will express the trait of whichever allele he receives from his mothers X chromosome. This can be a disadvantage in situations like colorblindness. If a mother is heterozygous for being colorblind and she has children with a normal vision man, her female children will all have normal vision because they receive alleles from their mother and fathers X chromosomes. However, half of her male children will be colorblind because they will receive a colorblind allele from the mother. Polygenic inheritance also deviates from Mendels conclusions because it is the concept that some genes can be inherited together which goes against the law of independent assortment. An example of this is human skin color. There are people who can inherit dominant and recessive genes controlling skin color. This explains why there are people who have skin color ranging from extremely dark to completely white.