Gregor John Mendel and his work

Biogeography

 Johann Mendel was born in 1822 to a peasant family in the Central European village of Heinzendorf. He studied philosophy for several years. In 1843 he was admitted to the Augustinian Monastery of St. Thomas in Brno (now part of the Czech Republic). In 1851 he attended the University of Vienna, where he studied physics and botany. In 1854, he returned to Brno and started teaching physics and natural science for the next 16 years. 

In 1856, Mendel started his research and performed a set of hybridization experiments with the garden pea. His experiments continued until 1868. In 1884, Mendel died of a kidney disorder.

Mendel first reported the results of some simple genetic crosses between certain strains of the garden pea in 1865. The findings were published in 1866 in his paper “Experiment on plant hybridization”. These experiments established many rules of heredity later called the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

In the early twentieth century,  Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich Tschermak (botanists) performed hybridization experiments and reached conclusions similar to those of Mendel.

About the same time, Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri (cytologists), independently published papers linking their discoveries of the behavior of chromosomes during meiosis to the Mendelian principles of segregation and independent assortment. 

His work was neglected

Mendel’s published paper had no impression for nearly 34 years. Later on in 1900 Hugo de Vries (Dutch), De Correns (German), and Tschmarck (Austrian) recognized his work.  

The most common reasons Mendel’s work got no impressions were:

1. Most biologists were preoccupied with Darwin’s theory of organic evolution.
2. The journal in which Mendel’s work was published was not recognized.
3. Most biologists were unfamiliar with the statistical analysis used by Mendel.

Mendel’s Experimental Model:

Mendel first very carefully selected a suitable plant for his hybridization experiments. He selected the garden pea (Pisum sativum) for the following reasons.

Ability to Self-pollinate: Garden pea plants are self-pollinating.

Ability to Cross-pollinate: Cross-pollination and fertilization can also be achieved easily.

Easy to grow: The pea plant was easy to grow in pots and open gardens.

Distinct heritable characters: Peas had many sharply defined inherited characters.

Hermaphrodite flowers: The flowers are bisexual and hermaphrodite.

Short life cycle: It has a short life cycle and germinates in up to 7 days.

Large Number of Seeds: Its plant produces a large number of seeds.

Gregor Johann Mendel published the results of a series of experiments and layed the foundation for the discipline of genetics.