Gregor Mendel: biography of the father of modern genetics

Gregor Mendel (1843-1822) was a botanist with a background in philosophy, physics, and mathematics, who was he claims to have discovered the mathematical foundations of the genetic sciences, which is now called "Mendelianism".

Then we will see the biography of Gregor Mendel as well as his main contributions to modern genetics.

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Biography of Gregor Mendel, father of genetics

Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 20, 1822, in the rural community Heinzendorf bei Odrau, in the former Austrian Empire, now the Czech Republic. He was the son of peasants with few economic resources, so Mendel spent his childhood working as a rancher, an issue that later helped him complete higher education studies.

He studied at the Philosophical Institute of Olomouc, where he showed great skills for physics and mathematics. Despite his family's wishes to continue on the family farm, Gregor Mendel began his theological training in 1843. This was influenced because his academic abilities were soon recognized by the local priest. In 1847 he was ordained as a priest and in 1851 he was sent to the University of Vienna to continue his studies.

There he trained under the guidance of the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler and the physicist-mathematician Andreas von Ettingshausen. Later he studied plant anatomy and physiology, and specialized in the use of microscope under the mentorship of botanist Franz Unger, who was an expert in cell theory and supported the development of a pre-Darwinian theory of evolution, which greatly influenced Mendel's thesis.

Despite having lived at the same time as Darwin and having read some of his texts, there is no evidence that there was a direct exchange between Mendel and Darwin and his teachers.

Mendel saw himself very soon motivated by nature research, which led him to study different species of plants, but also to the area of ​​meteorology and different theories of evolution. Among other things he discovered that the different varieties of peas have particular properties intrinsic that, when mixed, eventually produce new species of plants as units independent.

His studies laid the groundwork for the discovery of the inherited activity of genes, chromosomes and cell division, which were later known as Mendel's laws. Gregor Mendel died on January 6, 1884 in Austria-Hungary, due to kidney disease. He was not aware of having discovered a fundamental part of the development of classical genetics, since his knowledge was "rediscovered" years later by Dutch scientists.

Mendel's Laws of Heredity

Mendel's laws of inheritance, also known as Mendelian inheritance, are derived from his research, conducted between 1856 and 1863. This botanist had grown about 28,000 pea plants, which led him to formulate two generalizations about how genetic information is transmitted based on the expression of the genotype.

His text "Experiments on plant hybridization" was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak, who had experimented and reached the same conclusions as Mendel. In 1900, another scientist, named Hugo Vires, pushed for the recognition of Mendel's laws, while he coined the words "genetics," "gene," and "allele." In summary, we will see below what each of these laws consists of.

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1. Mendel's First Law

It is also known as the Law of Independent Character Segregation, the Law of Equitable Segregation, or the Law of Allele Disjunction. Describe the random migration of chromosomes during the meiosis phase which is called anaphase I.

What this law proposed was that during the formation of gametes (the reproductive cells of living beings), each of the forms that the same gene has is separated from its pair, to shape the final gamete. Thus, each gamete has an allele for each gene and downward variation is ensured.

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2. Mendel's second law

This law is also called the Law of the independent transmission of characters. Mendel discovered the random alignment of chromosome pairs during the phase of meiosis called metaphase I.

The second law says that different traits of genes that are on different chromosomes are inherited independently of each other, with which, the inheritance pattern of one does not affect that of the the rest.

The conclusion is that genetic dominance is the result of the expression of the set of genes and hereditary factors that exist in the body (the genotype), and not so much of their transmission. There is a controversy as to whether the latter constitutes a third law, which precedes the others, and is known as the “Law of uniformity of hybrids of the first filial generation”.

Bibliographic references:

• Garrigues, F. (2017). Mendel's Laws: 3 Commandments of Genetics. Medical genetics blog. Retrieved October 16, 2018. Available in https://revistageneticamedica.com/blog/leyes-de-mendel/.
• Gregor Mendel (2013). New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 16, 2018. Available in http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Gregor_Mendel.
• Gregor Mendel (2018). Famous Scientists. The Art of Genius. Retrieved October 16, 2018. Available in https://www.famousscientists.org/gregor-mendel/.
• Olby, R. (2018). Gregor Mendel. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved October 16, 2018. Available in https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gregor-Mendel.