Given below is a schematic representation of the inheritance of the shape of seeds of garden pea. Answer the questions that follow.
State Mendel’s Law of Dominance.
Topic: Mendel’s Law of Dominance
Answer
MENDEL’S LAW OF DOMINANCE states that when two contrasting alleles of a character are present together in an organism, only ONE — the DOMINANT allele — expresses itself in the F1 generation, while the other, the RECESSIVE allele, remains hidden or masked.
The essential words are that the recessive allele is MASKED, not destroyed. It is still present and is passed on unchanged, which is why it reappears in the F2 generation.
Mendel’s three laws as a set, since any may be asked: LAW OF DOMINANCE — only the dominant character shows in a hybrid LAW OF SEGREGATION — the two alleles of a pair separate during gamete formation, each gamete receiving only one LAW OF INDEPENDENT ASSORTMENT — different pairs of alleles are inherited independently of one another
The law of dominance explains part (a) of this question and the law of segregation explains part (b) — so the three parts together trace one cross from principle to result.