How many contrasting characters were used by Mendel to formulate the laws of inheritance?
7
Gregor Johann Mendel, the "Father of Genetics", carried out his classic experiments on the garden pea (Pisum sativum) and studied 7 pairs of contrasting characters to formulate his laws of inheritance.
These seven traits were: seed shape (round/wrinkled), seed colour (yellow/green), flower colour (violet/white), pod shape (inflated/constricted), pod colour (green/yellow), flower position (axial/terminal) and stem height (tall/dwarf). By tracking how these clear-cut alternative forms passed to offspring, Mendel deduced the Laws of Dominance, Segregation and Independent Assortment.
The other options (5, 8 and 4) do not match the well-documented number of contrasting characters Mendel actually used, which is seven.
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Important Questions from Genetics and Evolution
Different varieties of the same gene are called
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In most prokaryotes, the chromosome number is:
Bacterial DNA is referred to as naked because it is not associated with:
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