Genetics

Ch. 3 Genetics

6th Grade Science

What did Mendel do?

• 1800s, an Austrian monk discovered the basic rules that explain how traits are passed from parents to offspring.

• In 1856, Mendel took charge of the gardens in his monastery. He experimented with pea plants to study how traits are passed from parent to their offspring.

• Mendel studied the inheritance of seven different traits.

How do organisms pass on characteristics to their offspring

• Inherited traits

• DNA

• Chromosomes

• Parents

What is Heredity?

Living things tend to look like their parents. Parents pass some of their features, or inherited traits to their offspring. *Inherited traits are characteristics that are pssed from parent to offspring.

The passing of inherited traits form parent to offspring is known as heredity.

Acquired Traits and Inherited Traits

• *Inherited traits are characteristics that are passed from parent to offspring.

• *Acquired traits are traits influenced by experience or the environment.

• Genetics is the study of heredity.

Multiple Choice

Which shows an inherited trait?

Pea Plant Traits

Dominant & Recessive Traits

• A Dominant trait masks the other form of the trait, and shows through in the phenotype

• A Recessive trait is the hidden form of a trait unless both alleles are the recessive form.

• A Hybrid is an organism that have inherited two different forms of the same trait, one from each parent.

• Organisms that always produce offspring with the same traits are known as Purebred.