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Question

Had Mendel chose to study traits on a plant that were linked, he would not have been able to put forward which of the following laws?

A
Law of Dominance
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B
Law of Segregation
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C
Law of Purity of gametes
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D
Law of Independent Assortment
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Solution

The correct option is D Law of Independent Assortment
Mendel selected the pea plant (Pisum sativum) for his experimental purposes. The pea plant exhibited a variety of characters (visible features), out of which 7 characters caught his attention. This is because these characters were sufficiently contrasting to each other and had 2 distinct variants. Mendel then proceeded with his crossing experiments and noted down his results carefully.
When Mendel conducted dihybrid crosses (a cross in which 2 contrasting features are taken into account), he put forth his Law of Independent Assortment, based on the results obtained from the dihybrid cross. According to this law, during the inheritance of 2 different genes in an offspring, the segregation of alleles of one gene into the offspring is independent of the segregation of the alleles of the other. In other words, alleles of genes were inherited independent of each other implying that the genes behaved as independent units and were inherited independently.
But later when Morgan performed dihybrid crosses on Drosophila and he discovered a phenomenon which he termed linkage. He found out that a combination of a few genes behaved as a single unit and were inherited as such. This suggested some physical connection between those genes due to which those genes show a tendency to be together and be inherited together. Linkage was found to be opposite of the Law of Independent Assortment. Had Mendel by chance chose to study traits on a plant that were linked, he would not have been able to postulate his law.

Law of Dominance states that out of the 2 contrasting alleles for a gene, one is dominant over the other.
Law of Segregation (Law of Purity of gametes) states that during the formation of gametes, the alleles segregate in such a way that each gamete receives only one allele.
Law of Dominance and law of Segregation were formulated based on monohybrid crosses which took into consideration only one character at a time. There was no involvement of a second character to show linkage.

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