{"id":75340,"date":"2022-08-11T20:43:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-12T00:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=75340"},"modified":"2022-08-23T14:24:12","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T18:24:12","slug":"gregor-mendel-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Gregor Mendel&#8217;s Discovery: The Laws of Heredity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How did Gregor Mendel contribute to the field of genetics? What foundational principles of heredity did Mendel discover?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Long before the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-was-dna-discovered\/\">discovery of DNA<\/a>, biologist and Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel discovered how genes get passed down from parents to offspring. His discovery was one of the major breakthroughs in genetics (although that word didn\u2019t exist yet), laying the foundation for the study of heredity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep reading to learn about Gregor Mendel&#8217;s discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-mendel-s-unit-of-heredity\"><strong>Mendel\u2019s \u201cUnit of Heredity\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1864, not long after Darwin published <em>The Origin of Species<\/em>, Gregor Mendel made a ground-breaking discovery in the field of genetics. By breeding and studying pea plants with obviously different traits\u2014such as different heights, different colored flowers, and so on\u2014he discovered clear patterns of inheritance across generations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most importantly, <strong>Mendel discovered that traits would be passed on completely;<\/strong> for example, if he cross-pollinated a purple-flowered plant with a white-flowered plant, the offspring would have purple flowers. Gregor Mendel&#8217;s discovery ran counter to the popular theory of Mendel\u2019s time that traits would \u201cblend\u201d during inheritance, in which case that plant would end up with pale purple flowers, or some purple and some white.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>If traits get passed on completely intact, Mendel reasoned, then there must be a \u201cunit\u201d of heredity:<\/strong> self-contained packets of genetic information representing a single trait\u2014which Mendel called <em>factors<\/em>\u2014rather than a stream of particles mixing with other streams like Darwin proposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Mendel\u2019s Laws of Inheritance<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Aside from his concept of a unit of heredity, Mendel is credited with creating two \u201claws\u201d that describe patterns of inheritance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Law of Segregation. <\/strong>Organisms have two copies of each gene\u2014one from each of their parents\u2014which may be different from one another. When an organism reproduces, it randomly passes on one gene from each pair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Law of Independent Assortment. <\/strong>Genes are passed on to offspring independently of each other. In other words, offspring inheriting one trait doesn\u2019t guarantee they\u2019ll inherit a different trait\u2014blond hair doesn\u2019t always go with blue eyes, for example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How did Gregor Mendel contribute to the field of genetics? What foundational principles of heredity did Mendel discover? Long before the discovery of DNA, biologist and Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel discovered how genes get passed down from parents to offspring. His discovery was one of the major breakthroughs in genetics (although that word didn\u2019t exist yet), laying the foundation for the study of heredity. Keep reading to learn about Gregor Mendel&#8217;s discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":57556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,160],"tags":[715],"class_list":["post-75340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-science","tag-the-gene","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Gregor Mendel&#039;s Discovery: The Laws of Heredity - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gregor Mendel discovered that traits are passed down completely. Here&#039;s how Mendel&#039;s discovery laid the foundation for the study of heredity.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gregor Mendel&#039;s Discovery: The Laws of Heredity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gregor Mendel discovered that traits are passed down completely. Here&#039;s how Mendel&#039;s discovery laid the foundation for the study of heredity.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-08-12T00:43:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-08-23T18:24:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/dna-gene-genetics-biology.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Darya Sinusoid\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Darya Sinusoid\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0421cce75bc249b11e2517b3a91f9c46\"},\"headline\":\"Gregor Mendel&#8217;s Discovery: The Laws of Heredity\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-08-12T00:43:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-08-23T18:24:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/\"},\"wordCount\":353,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/dna-gene-genetics-biology.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Gene\"],\"articleSection\":[\"History\",\"Science\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/\",\"name\":\"Gregor Mendel's Discovery: The Laws of Heredity - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gregor-mendel-discovery\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/dna-gene-genetics-biology.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-08-12T00:43:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-08-23T18:24:12+00:00\",\"description\":\"Gregor Mendel discovered that traits are passed down completely. 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