Mendel’s Laws

Gregor Mendel established the fundamental truth that heredity is particulate that is, heredity is related to substance that lies in the chromosomes. Although Mendel did not know anything about chromosomes, four fundamental laws of heredity evolved from his work the law of dominance, the law of segregation, the law of independent assortment, and the law of unit characters. The law of dominance states that one gene of a pair may mask or inhibit the expression of the other gene of a pair. The law of segregation states that the genes that make up the pairs are separated from each other in an unaltered condition when reduction division takes place. The law of independent assortment states that the distribution of one pair of factors is independent of the distribution of another pair. The law of unit characters states that each characteristic is transmitted as an unchanging unit.