Question

What is Mendel's first and second law?

Answer 1

Mendel's law:

1. Gregor Mendel conducted several experiments on pea plants for seven years and then postulated the laws of inheritance.
2. Mendel's law of inheritance includes the law of dominance, the law of segregation, and the law of independent assortment.

Mendel's first law:

1. The first law of inheritance is the law of dominance.
2. The law states that hybrid offspring will only inherit the dominant characteristics in the phenotype.
3. The alleles that suppress a trait are recessive traits, whereas the alleles that define a trait are known as dominant traits.
4. Monohybrid cross helped in proposing the law of dominance.
5. In a monohybrid cross, Mendel crossed two pure pea plants with opposing traits (one short and one tall).
6. Mendel named those first-generation offsprings as F₁ progeny and all the offspring produced by crossing tall plants (dominant trait) and dwarf plants (recessive trait) were tall ( heterozygous dominant or hybrid).
7. After that, Mendel crossed F₁ progeny, and both tall and dwarf plants were obtained in the F₂ generation.

Mendel's second law:

1. Mendel's second law is the law of segregation.
2. The law states that every pair of alleles or genes in parents, divides and a single gene is transferred from each parent to their offspring.
3. The passage of a particular gene in a pair is a chance event.

Basic concepts of the law of segregation:

1. There are several alleles for a single gene.
2. Every organism inherits a pair of alleles for each gene.
3. During the process of gametogenesis, when gametes are produced by meiosis, Then the allelic pairs segregate, leaving each gamete with only one allele.
4. A gene has two alternate forms known as alleles. One allele is dominant while the other allele is recessive.