Biology Project Work

TOPIC Principles Of Inheritance And Variations

Topics
Mendel and the process of science Mendels principles of inheritance Crosses: Parental, F1, F2, and test Chromosome mapping Variations on Mendelian inheritance In-breeding and out-breeding

What Did Mendel Show? Breeders knew of hybrids at the time that Mendel started his

experiments (in 1856), but only knew that progeny resembled each parent, and that some resembled grandparents. No one knew why. Mendel developed a systematic way of understanding heredity, using very good scientific technique. He applied the scientific method combined with mathematical analysis to demonstrate: 1. Unit characteristics 2. Segregation of those characteristics 3. Dominance of some characteristics 4. Independent assortment of characteristics

Mendel Carefully Chose His Organism

Pisum sativum: the garden pea 1. Very productive: produces many peas (large N: good statistics) 2. Short life cycle: produce many generations in a short time 3. Typically self-pollinating: good for inbreeding 4. Easily cross-pollinated due to flower structure Has 7 distinct phenotypic characteristics: 1. Yellow versus green seeds 2. Round versus wrinkled seeds 3. Green versus yellow pods 4. Tall versus short plants 5. Fat versus tight pods 6. White versus grey seed coats 7. Flowers: end of stem versus along the length of stem

The Pea Flower

The flower is well-suited to this study, which required controlled pollination Protects the reproductive apparatus Male (anther: makes pollen) Female (ovary: makes ova) Stigma arises from the ovary Good for inbreeding and artificial breeding Can bag flowers, easily cut off the anthers to prevent further pollination

One of Mendels Crosses Mendel knew nothing of the chemical basis

for inheritance He had to work very carefully and examine ONLY the outward appearance of the plants He compared what we call today the phenotype, which is the outward expression of the genes

A Parental Cross
Homozygous Tall (TT) X Homozygous Short (tt)

All of the F1 generation are tall.

Demonstrates the concept of

dominance

Cross of F1 Cross the F generation at random to

1

itself.

1/4 of F2 (the progeny of the F1 cross) are short

Mendel showed that the short plant bred true, so it was a parental type. That a parental phenotype disappeared and then reappeared destroys the concept of blending. It was masked in the F1 Instead, it supports the concept of unit

characteristics genes, as we now understand them

Segregation of Characteristics
Mendel recognized that the only way to achieve the masking of the characteristics was to segregate (separate) them somehow in the gametes. The characters must have been separated during formation of the pollen (male) and the ova (female). This is the concept of segregation.

Chromosomal Basis of Segregation

Segregation occurs in meiosis at Metaphase I and then at Metaphase II As a result, the ova or sperm contribute different homologous chromosomes to the progeny

Mendels Concepts & Modern Terminology

Mendel worked in a strictly conceptual framework he had NO IDEA of the nature of the genetic material Today we know his characters are the products of genes. The collection of genes is the genotype, or genome. A gene is positioned at a given locus (loci, plural). Position is very important, it can define the effect of a gene Regulation of genes is position-dependent.

Alleles
Different varieties of genes are called alleles. Since diploid (2n) organisms have 2 sets of chromosomes, there are two possible alleles for each gene locus in a 2n organism. If those alleles are the same, the organism is homozygous at that location If different, it is heterozygous

Homozygotes & Heterozygotes We indicate the genotype by the letters:

Dominant alleles are represented by capital letters Recessive alleles are represented by lower case letters Examples: TT is homozygous dominant Phenotype is dominant tt is homozygous recessive Phenotype is recessive Tt is heterozygous Phenotype is dominant

Homologs & Alleles

2n organisms have a chromosome received from each parent. Called homologous chromosomes These have alleles of A, B, C & D. A & a, B & b, C & c, D & d C is NOT an allele to D; nor is A or B A locus is a physical location of DNA that encodes for a protein product; i.e. a gene A, B, C & D are at specific loci

Diploid cells

Homologous and Non homologous Chromosomes: Definitions

A Test Cross
What if you only know that you have a black and a brown guinea pig (i.e. you dont know the genotype)? Do a test cross Cross with a known truebreeding recessive brown guinea pig

 On inspection, heterozygotes are indistinguishable from homozygote dominants. Phenotypes can be tested for genotype with test crosses Test crosses are easily checked w/ Punnett squares. Always cross the unknown into homozygous recessive to reveal the dominant genotype. The distribution of alleles follows the product law and the sum law.

Test Crosses: Mechanism

a A A Aa Aa

a Aa Aa

All A phenotype: Homozygous A

a A a Aa aa

a Aa aa

A phenotype; a phenotype

Mapping Chromosomes
If there is 8% crossover between A & C, 5% crossover between A & B, and 3% between B and C, we can arrange them in this manner (a): If the crossover between A and C was 2% instead of 8%, we could rearrange as in (b).

Incomplete Dominance

Inbreeding
Inbreeding was useful to Mendel for producing true-breeders But it can concentrate undesirable attributes, which are often recessive. Human inbreeding tends to increase the frequency of rare genetic disorders, although the Tamil of India extensively intermarry with little or no ill effect. Australian sheepdogs must be euthanized if they are white puppies: they become blind, deaf, and have many skeletal muscle problems The English bulldog has significant bone structure problems many members of this breed can barely mate and bear puppies, and many have difficulty breathing

 Outbreeding means breeding of different strains or stocks of the same organism Breeding to different strains tends to produce more robust individuals, referred to as hybrid

Outbreeding

vigor
Produces individuals that are multiply heterozygous at many loci Masks recessives in many different traits In many cases, multiple heterozygosis seems to confer additional advantage beyond the masking of recessive traits. This is referred to as over dominance or the Heterozygote Advantage. Most modern grain crops are multiple hybrids: they are more resistant to disease, tolerate changes in weather, etc. A simple example: Sickle Cell Anemia People heterozygous for sickle-cell anemia have a distinct advantage in Africa, where the trait improves resistance to malaria by interfering with the parasite life cycle. The moderate illness due to the heterozygote sickle cell condition is not severely disabling.

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