Question

Mendel was able to identify predictable patterns of heredity. He succeeded mainly because he chose to study traits that:

a.) were always dominant
b.) tended to be recessive,
c.) could be diluted
d.) had only two forms?

Answer 1

Mendel's success in identifying hereditary patterns was due to his focus on traits with only two forms: dominant and recessive, resulting in a clear 3:1 phenotypic ratio in his pea plant experiments. The answer is option D.

Step-by-step explanation:

Mendel was able to identify predictable patterns of heredity mainly because he chose to study traits that had only two forms: dominant and recessive. He performed thousands of crosses in pea plants with differing traits for a variety of characteristics, identifying a predictable 3:1 phenotypic ratio in second-generation offspring. Mendel's work laid the foundation for our understanding of genetic inheritance, proposing that heritable 'factors', now known as alleles, are transmitted from each parent and inherited in pairs by offspring.

While Mendel's principle of dominant and recessive traits forms the basis of classical genetics, it is important to note that not all inheritance patterns follow this simple dichotomy. Modern genetics recognizes more complex interactions of alleles, such as codominance and incomplete dominance, which were discovered after Mendel's seminal work.