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Although he received little recognition during his lifetime, Gregor Mendel’s experiments with pea plants launched the science of genetics.
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Scientific monk Gregor Mendel studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy before joining a monastery in 1843, aged 21. More interested in science than religion, he began EXPERIMENTING WITH PEA PLANTS in the monastery’s garden. For thousands of years, people had bred animals and plants to produce offspring with the best traits, or features, but it was unreliable. Mendel wanted to find out how physical characteristics were passed down the generations.
Who came after…
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In 1869, Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher discovered an acid in the nuclei of red blood cells, now called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Naming it nuclein, he proposed it might be the basis of heredity (the transfer of features from parents to offspring). Genes are made of DNA.
Danish biologist WilhelM Johannsen coined the word gene in 1909 to describe the inheritance factors that Mendel had described. The word came from the Greek word genos, meaning birth.
