Final answer:
Genetics is the biological study focusing on heredity, genes, and genetic inheritance. The subject was pioneered by Gregor Mendel before the full understanding of chromosomes and genes. Genetics encompasses the patterns of inheritance and mutations, significantly influencing heredity.
Step-by-step explanation:
The study of heredity, genes, and their role in the transmission of hereditary information and variations is known as genetics. Johann Gregor Mendel, often considered the "father" of genetics, laid the foundation for this field by conducting experiments even before the knowledge of chromosomes or genes was established. Genetics involves understanding how traits are passed down from parents to offspring and explores patterns such as autosomal dominance, recessiveness, and much more. The discovery of the gene, carried on chromosomes as the basic functional unit of heredity, has been pivotal. Genes hold the capacity to be replicated, expressed, or mutated, influencing the characteristics that are inherited.
Genetics is not only concerned with simple inheritance patterns but also with complex ones, including those responsible for human genetic disorders. The discipline uses statistical methods and rules of probability, as shown by Mendel, to anticipate inheritance patterns and study mutations that can lead to changes in phenotypes.