Gregor Mendel is an Australian monk, who worked in a garden at a monastery. He experimented with pea plants, and soon became known as the father of genetics. The reason he studied pea plants was because they grow quickly, the traits can be easily observed, and the plant is easy to pollinate. Mendel’s method was to control the pollination of the pea plants and create offspring’s of the two plants that were pollinated together. Using self-pollination and cross pollination, Mendel was able to select plants that had specific traits and observe the traits that appeared in their offspring. The F1 generation is the offspring that is a cross between two parents. The F2 generation is the offspring that is a cross between two individuals in the same F1 generation. A dominant factor is the dominating factor, and the one that masks the effect of the recessive factor for the same characteristic. A recessive factor is one whose effect is taken over by the dominant factor for the same characteristic. Basically, a trait that is controlled by a recessive factor would not appear when paired with a trait controlled by a dominant factor.
Chromosomes are threadlike structures made up of DNA and protein, while a gene is a segment of DNA on a chromosome that controls a particular trait. An allele is an alternate form of a trait. Homozygous means that all of the alleles are the same in the DNA, and heterozygous means that the alleles are mixed up. For example, homozygous would be PP or pp, and heterozygous would be Pp. The dominant factor is uppercase, and the recessive trait is lowercase. Gregor Mendel’s legacy theory has been proved by several other scientists as