High School Biology/Mendelian Inheritance

Based on Mendel's Investigations, Mendel proposed two laws of inheritance which are now called Mendelian inheritance. The Mendelian inheritance explains how traits may be inherited from the parents to the offspring.

Law of Segregation

The first law Mendel proposed is called the Law of Segregation. According to this law, every single visible trait (phenotype) is an outcome of a pair of alleles (genotype). Each parent may pass only one of the pair of alleles they posses to their offspring through a gamete. Thus, fertilization from two normal gametes results in pairs of different alleles in the offspring. Dominant alleles may be expressed over the recessive ones.

Law of Independent Assortment

The second law is called the Law of Independent Assortment. This law states that every trait in the offspring is inherited separately from the other traits through separate genes. In other words, an expression of one trait is independent of the expression of another. Mendel proved this idea by examining cross breed of plants with two different traits. This technique is also referred to dihybrid cross.

This material was adapted from the original CK-12 book that can be found here. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License