
Concept explainers
What property distinguished Mendel’s investigation from previous studies?
a. Mendel used true-breeding pea plants.
b. Mendel quantified his results.
c. Mendel examined many different traits.
d. Mendel examined the segregation of traits.

Introduction:
Mendel initiated his experiment on plant hybridization using specific differences between the pea plants. The differences are comparable. For example, he recognized the inheritance of round seeds versus the inheritance of wrinkled seed. Mendel conducted his experiments in three stages; self-cross in a chosen pea plant variety, crossing of true-breeding varieties displaying alternative forms of traits, hybrid offspring production by letting them self-fertilize for several generations. Mendel counted the numbers of offspring displaying each trait in each subsequent generation. He quantified the results obtained from crosses through mathematical analysis, which led to the inheritance model that is studied until now.
Answer to Problem 1U
Correct answer:
Mendel is concerned with well define traits at a particular time, quantifying the offspring and analyzing the result mathematically. Therefore, option b. is correct.
Explanation of Solution
Reason for the correct statement:
There were five features of Mendel’s breeding experiments that were critical to his success, such as controlled crosses, use of pre-breeding strains, selection of dichotomous traits, quantification of results, and use of reciprocal and test cross.
Option b. is given as “Mendel quantified his result”.
As “Mendel was not the first to study patterns of inheritance but he was the first to use true-breeding strains as parent and to quantify the results that involve well defined variation in characteristics of pea plant in every successive generation”, it is the right answer.
Hence, option b is correct.
Reasons for the incorrect statements:
Option a. is given as “Mendel used true-breeding pea plant”.
T. A. Knight in 1823 performed cross between two varieties of the garden pea; one variety with green seeds, and the other with yellow seeds. Both varieties were true-breeding, and the offspring produced from self-fertilization remained uniform in every generation. Therefore, it is the wrong answer.
Option c. is given as “Mendel examined many different traits”.
Many other investigators made observations similar to Mendel using different traits with alternative forms of observed traits that are being distributed among the offspring. Therefore, it is the wrong answer.
Option d. is given as “Mendel examined the segregation of traits”.
One of the modern geneticists experimented the alternative forms of traits that were segregating among the progeny of a mating, observes that some offspring exhibited one form of a trait (yellow seeds), and other offspring from the same mating exhibited a different form (green seeds). Therefore, it is the wrong answer.
Hence options b., c., and d. are incorrect.
Conclusion:
The quantification of the results obtained from hybridization experiments in pea plant was the property that distinguished Mendel’s investigation from previous studies.
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Chapter 12 Solutions
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