Resource 2: Answers to Activity 2

Mendel was a Czech monk who carried out controlled breeding experiments with mice and pea plants to find out about inheritance. He published his ideas on inheritance in 1865 but they were not very well received because biologists of the time were not really interested in the mathematical treatment of scientific results or keen on the idea that there was a ‘heritable unit’. It was not until 1903 that Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance were accepted by scientists.

Mendel’s Laws are:

1. That a heritable unit called a gene is passed on from one generation to the next.
2. That genes can exist in different forms that are called alleles.
3. That each individual must have two alleles per feature.
4. That the sex cells can only have one allele per feature.
5. One allele can be dominant over the other.

Full word list: Mendel, inheritance, 1865, biologists, heritable, 1903, scientists, gene, allele, dominant.