Science 10 with CSS teacher

For thousands of years farmers and herders have been selectively breeding plants and animals to produce offspring who have inherited the best traits from the parents. It was somewhat of a hit or miss process since the actual mechanisms governing inheritance were unknown. Knowledge of these genetic mechanisms finally came as a result of careful laboratory breeding experiments carried out over the last century and a half. By the 1890's, the invention of better microscopes allowed biologists to discover the basic facts of cell division and sexual reproduction. The focus of genetic research then shifted to understanding what really happens in the transmission of hereditary traits from parents to children. A number of hypotheses were suggested to explain heredity, but Gregor Mendel , a little known Central European monk, was the only one who got it more or less right. His ideas had been published in 1866 but largely went unrecognized until 1900, which was long after his death. His early adult life was spent in relative obscurity doing basic genetics research using pea plants. He came to three important conclusions from his experimental results:

1. that the inheritance of each trait is determined by "units" or "factors" that are passed on to descendents unchanged (these units are now called genes).
2. that an individual inherits one such unit from each parent for each trait.
3. that a trait may not show up in an individual but can still be passed on to the next generation.

'Click here' to read about Gregor Mendel and his research into heredity using pea plants.