Gregor Mendel: known in the science world as “THE FATHER OF GENETICS”. - laid the foundations for the SCIENCE OF GENETICS through his study of inheritance patterns of traits in pea plants.

Mendel prevented self-pollination and used another method called …. Cross Pollination: the joining of pollen and egg from 2 different plants creating what is called a Hybrid - an organism that receives different forms of a genetic trait from each parent

What is GENETICS: The study of heredity or inheritance of traits. What is a TRAIT? A specific characteristic that can be passed from parent to offspring.

The Principle of Dominance: States that some traits are dominate and others are recessive.

A dominant trait is the visible trait & may be shown with a capital letter (B). A recessive trait is the trait that is sometimes “hidden” & may be shown with a lower case letter (b)

PRINCIPLE OF SEGREGATION: States that each pair of genes segregate or separate during meiosis carrying only a single copy of each gene.

What is a Gene: a section of a chromosome that codes for a protein which will indicate a genetic trait (Ex. height of plant or pea color). Most organisms have 2 copies of every gene ( on each chromosome). What is an Alleles: different forms of the same gene (ex. tall or short, yellow or green).

What is Homozygous? - organisms have 2 identical alleles for a particular trait and are called purebreds. (Genotype would read as HH or hh) What is Heterozygous? organisms have 2 different alleles for the same trait and are called hybrids. (Genotype would read Hh)

What is Phenotype? Refers to the physical appearance of an organism. Ex: Tall or short, yellow or green, short tail or long tail What is Genotype? – Refers to the genetic make up of an organism. Ex: TT, Tt, tt, SS, Ss, ss)

PRINCIPLE OF PROBABILITY Method used to predict the possible outcome of genetic crosses (Ex: like flipping a coin – you have a 50/50 chance of heads or tails)

What is a Punnett Square? A tool or grid used to predict and compare the genetic variations that will result in a cross of two organisms traits.

Punnett Squares homozygous recessive heterozygous Genotypes Rr - 50% rr - 50% Phenotypes Red - 50% Blonde - 50% RED HEADS ( r ) vs BLONDES (R)