Question

Mendel's world remain unrecognized during his lifetime. Give reasons.

Answer 1

In 1856, Mendel began a decade-long research project to investigate patterns of inheritance. A model system is an organism that makes it easy for a researcher to investigate a particular scientific question, such as how traits are inherited. By studying a model system, researchers can learn general principles that apply to other, harder-to-study organisms or biological systems, such as humans. Mendel's contemporaries failed to recognize the the importance of his work because his findings went against prevailing (popular) ideas about inheritance. In addition, although we now see Mendel's mathematical approach to biology as innovative and pioneering, it was new, unfamiliar, and perhaps confusing or unintuitive to other biologists of the time. In the mid-1800s, when Mendel was doing his experiments, most biologists subscribed to the idea of blending inheritance. Blending inheritance was not a formal, scientific hypothesis, but rather, a general model in which inheritance involved the permanent blending of parents' characteristics in their offspring (producing offspring with an intermediate form of a characteristic). But the blending model could not explain why Mendel crossed a tall and a short pea plant and got only tall plants, or why self-fertilization of one of those tall plants would produce a 3:13:1 ratio of tall to short plants in the next generation. Instead, if the blending model were correct, a tall plant crossed with a short plant should produce a medium plant, which would go on to produce more medium plants. He was not recognized for his extraordinary scientific contributions during his lifetime. In fact, it was not until around 1900 that his work was rediscovered, reproduced, and revitalized.