Mendel's Law of Segregation

How are traits passed from parents to offspring? The answer is by gene transmission. Genes are located on chromosomes and consist of DNA. They are passed from parents to their offspring through reproduction. The principles that govern heredity were discovered by a monk named Gregor Mendel in the 1860's. One of these principles is now called Mendel's law of segregation.

Mendel worked with pea plants and selected seven traits to study that each occurred in two different forms. For instance, one trait he studied was pod color. Some pea plants have green pods and others have yellow pods. Since pea plants are capable of self fertilization, Mendel was able to produce true-breeding plants. A true-breeding yellow-pod plant for example would only produce yellow-pod offspring. Mendel then began to experiment to find out what would happen if he cross-pollinated a true-breeding yellow pod plant with a true-breeding green pod plant. He referred to the two parental plants as the parental generation (P generation) and the resulting offspring were called the first filial or F1 generation.