Gregor Mendel: Biography Of The Father Of Modern Genetics
Gregor Mendel (1843-1822) was a botanist with training in philosophy, physics and mathematics, who is credited with discovering the mathematical bases of the genetic sciences, which is currently called “Mendelism”.
Next we will see the biography of Gregor Mendel as well as his main contributions to modern genetics.
Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 20, 1822, in the rural community Heinzendorf bei Odrau, in the former Austrian Empire, currently the Czech Republic. He was the son of farmers with few economic resources, so Mendel spent his childhood working as a rancher, an issue that later helped him complete higher education studies.
He studied at the Olomouc philosophical institute, where showed great abilities in physics and mathematics Despite his family’s wishes to continue on the family farm, Gregor Mendel began his theological training in 1843. This was influenced because his academic abilities were soon recognized by the local priest. In 1847 he was ordained as a priest and in 1851 he was sent to the University of Vienna to continue his studies.
There he trained under the guidance of the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler and the physicist-mathematician Andreas von Ettingshausen. He later studied plant anatomy and physiology, and specialized in the use of microscopes under the mentorship of the botanist Franz Unger, who was an expert in cell theory and supported the development of a pre-Darwinian theory of evolution, which significantly influenced Mendel’s thesis.
Despite having lived at the same time as Darwin and having read some of his texts, there is no evidence that there was a direct exchange between Mendel and Darwin and their teachers.
Mendel was seen very soon motivated by nature research , which led him to the study of different species of plants, but also to the area of meteorology and different theories of evolution. Among other things he discovered that different varieties of peas have particular intrinsic properties that, when mixed, eventually produce new plant species as independent units.
His studies laid the foundation for the discovery of the hereditary activity of genes, chromosomes and cell division , which were later known as Mendel’s laws. Gregor Mendel died on January 6, 1884 in Austria-Hungary, due to kidney disease. He was not aware of having discovered a fundamental part of the development of classical genetics, since his knowledge was “rediscovered” years later by Dutch scientists.
Mendel’s laws of inheritance
Mendel’s laws of inheritance, also known as Mendelian inheritance, are derived from his research, carried out between 1856 and 1863. This botanist had cultivated about 28,000 pea plants which led him to formulate two generalizations about how genetic information is transmitted based on genotype expression.
His text “Experiments on plant hybridization” was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak, who had experimented and reached the same conclusions as Mendel. In 1900, another scientist named Hugo Vires promoted the recognition of Mendel’s laws, at the same time he coined the words “genetics”, “gene” and “allele”. In summary we will see below what each of these laws consists of.
It is also known as the Law of Segregation of Independent Characters, the Law of Equitable Segregation, or the Law of Disjunction of Alleles. Describe the random migration of chromosomes during the phase meiosis called anaphase I
What this law proposed was that during the formation of gametes (the reproductive cells of living beings), each of the forms that have the same gene is separated from its pair , to shape the final gamete. Thus, each gamete has an allele for each gene and descending variation is ensured.
2. Mendel’s second law
This law is also called the Law of Independent Transmission of Characters. Mendel discovered the random alignment of chromosome pairs during the phase of meiosis called metaphase I.
The second law says that different traits of genes that are on different chromosomes are inherited independently of each other, meaning that the inheritance pattern of one does not affect that of the others.
The conclusion is that genetic dominance is the result of the expression of the set of genes and hereditary factors that exist in the organism (the genotype), and not so much of its transmission. There is controversy over whether the latter constitutes a third law, which precedes the others, and is known as the “Law of Uniformity of Hybrids of the First Filial Generation.”
