Gregor Mendel Lab

Gregor Mendel Biography

            Gregor Mendel, one of the greatest botanist of all times and the father of genetics, was born in Austria, 1822. The great scientist, was a monk and started doing experiments at the garden of the monastery, where he came up with the two Laws: the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment. He also worked at a school for 14 years. At the year of 1854, he began to research the ‘transmission of hereditary traits in plants and he chose to study it with peas, because they have many distinct varieties and they reproduce fast. Before he did his experiments and came up with the two laws, it was a fact that the hereditary traits were ‘merely the diluted blending of whatever traits were present in the parents’. Also that the hybrid would revert to the original form and will not be able to create new forms. After he crossed peas with different characteristics, tall-short, yellow-green, he created two conclusions. First, that there are dominant and recessive traits passed on randomly which he called it the law of segregation and second, traits are passed on independently which he called the law of independent assortment. Unfortunately, his findings were not applicable because they only applied to certain species. In 1868, his eyesight started to fail and that’s when he stopped his scientific work and died later on at the age of 62 at  January 6^th, 1884.