CD-ROM Mendelian Inheritance, Variability, Variation and Mutation. Containing 197 pictures and text

CD125. Mendelian Laws, Modification and Mutation. In order to establish the fact that heredity is governed by laws, it is necessary to mate living beings that exhibit certain differences from each other. The first experiments in this regard were performed by Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel in the 1860’s on the garden of his monastery in Brünn. He crossed different strains of peas and kept track of hereditary transmission of particular characteristics in hundreds of plants over a number of generations. He thus found significant number rules and could thereby gain fundamental insights into the nature of heredity. The term „variability“ groups all those alterations in living beings that, on account of not being hereditary, fall within the category of „modificability“. By contrast, alterations that can be passed on through heredity all called mutations. There is no doubt that changes in the hereditary makeup, i.e. mutations, made evolution possible in the first place.