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Nov 7, 2022 · A few giants in science once made discoveries that opened doors for us to enter a world never seen before. As the father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel is considered one of these giants owing to his discovery of the basic principles of inheritance.
Jul 30, 2022 · Johann Gregor Mendel is considered the father of genetics. Johann Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) (Figure 2) was a lifelong learner, teacher, scientist, and man of faith. As a young adult, he joined the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic.
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Genetics is fiendishly complex. We know this from decades of molecular biology, from the resulting studies on the sequencing and analysis of genomes and from our increasing knowledge of how genes interact with the environment. So how did the Augustinian friar, teacher and citizen scientist Gregor Mendel manage to describe principles of inheritance that still stand today — from work he performed alone in his monastery garden in the 1850s and 1860s?
Many of the details have been lost to history, because notes of Mendel’s experiments, including his interim observations and his working methods, were burnt after his death, as Kim Nasmyth at the University of Oxford, UK, describes in a Perspective article in Nature Reviews Genetics1.
But from his published works, as well as historical sources that have recently come to light, it’s clear that Mendel was a careful scientist; cautious, patient and committed to data. These qualities allowed him to make discoveries that have stood the test of time. The 200th anniversary of his birth on 22 July 1822 provides an opportunity to celebrate and recognize a giant in science. “Viewed in the light of what was known of cells in the mid-nineteenth century, Mendel was decades ahead of his time,” write Peter van Dijk at KeyGene in Wageningen, the Netherlands, and his colleagues in a Perspective article in Nature Genetics2.
Although Mendel had no knowledge of genes, chromosomes or genomes, he laid the foundations for genetics in a paper, ‘Experiments on plant hybrids’, which he presented to the Natural History Society of Brno (now in the Czech Republic) in 18653. Starting with 22 plants of the garden pea, Pisum sativum, and using manual pollination, Mendel crossbred these specimens and their progeny multiple times, producing more than 10,000 plants over 8 years. Plants from each pollination cycle were classified according to various characteristics, such as the colour and shape of the seeds and the position of flowers. By analysing these data, Mendel discovered that certain traits — shape and colour, for example — can be passed down from one generation to the next.
How did Mendel arrive at his discoveries?
Jul 11, 2022 · The Augustinian friar Gregor (Johann) Mendel (1822–1884) is the founder of the science of genetics. His crossbreeding experiments with peas, reported in two lectures in the spring of 1865 and...
Aug 22, 2024 · Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch microscopist who was the first to observe bacteria and protozoa. His researches on lower animals refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation, and his observations helped lay the foundations for the sciences of bacteriology and protozoology.
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Apr 2, 2014 · Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk who discovered the basic principles of heredity through experiments in his garden. Mendel's observations became the foundation of modern genetics and the...
Apr 4, 2015 · Leeuwenhoek (figure 1) was a pioneer, a scientist of the highest calibre, yet his reputation suffered at the hands of those who envied his fame or scorned his unschooled origins, as well as through his own mistrustful secrecy of his methods, which opened a world that others could not comprehend.
