Gregor Mendel is commonly known as the father of genetics. Start your study of Mendel by watching the this video on Mendel's Experiments.
Then go to the Biology Basics animation: Mendelian Inheritance.
Take your time working through this animation. Answer the following questions on your own paper as you work through the animation.
- Why were pea plants ideal for Mendel to use in his experiments?
- If a pea plant with purple flowers is allowed to self-pollinate, and generation after generation it produces purple flowers, what is this an example of?
- Why was it important for Mendel to examine both the F1 and F2 generations in his hybridization experiments?
- What did Mendel propose to account for the observation that traits which had disappeared in the F1 generation reappeared in the F2 generation?
- A cross between homozygous purple-flowered and homozygous white-flowered pea plants results in offspring with purple flowers. This demonstrates what?