The Foundation of Genetics: In 1866, Gregor Mendel presented his findings regarding the

inheritance of traits in pea plants. With experiments on 22 of the possible 34 pea plant varieties, he
planted them annually for 8 years, therefore allowing him to be assured his plants were true-breeding
varieties and his data correct. True-breeding meaning that all self fertilized offspring display the same
form of a trait as the parent. As being the first modern geneticist, Mendel proposed that an organism
carried two units for each visible characteristic but contributes only one to each offspring. Today, the
units are known to be genes, carried on two chromosomes. Later, he noted that some patterns of
inheritance were consistent, therefore creating laws.
The Importance of Corn: Experiments are performed on corn because mature corn plants
produce ears that contain hundreds of seeds or kernels. Each kernel is formed by the fertilization of an
egg by a male gamete. Therefore each kernel on an ear of corn can grow into a whole new plant and
contains a complete set of chromosomes found in corn. The usage of an entire corn cob is necessary
because a single cob contains hundreds of offspring from a single parental cross and illustrates the
results of traits being passed on from parents to a large number of offspring. The corncob bears kernels
that are either purple or yellow in color. The color of the corn fruit is inherited in exactly the same way
as the color of the flowers on Mendels peas.
The Experiment: In todays experiment you will examine and count corn kernels produced from
a monohybrid (cross between individuals that differ with respect to a single gene pair) and dihybrid
(cross between individuals that differ with respect to multiple gene pairs) crosses. The physical
appearance of the kernels will be looked at to determine the phenotype (physical expression of a trait)
of two characters: kernel color and carbohydrate content. There are two different alleles (alternative
forms of a single gene) for each gene: purple v yellow and starchy v sweet (plump v wrinkled). The
results of counting the kernels will demonstrate Mendels Laws of Inheritance: 1. The Law of
Segregation and 2. The Law of Independent Assortment. Following the law of segregation, for any
particular trait, the pair of alleles of each parent separate and only one allele passes from each parent
on to an offspring. This is proven by meiosis, where cells produced contain only half the chromosomes
number of the original cell and each gamete therefore only receives one of the alleles for that trait.
Therefore half of the two alleles that are found in the other cells of that organism. According to the law
of independent assortment, different pairs of alleles are passed to offspring independently of each
other. In our corn example that means that a kernel of corn has an equal chance of becoming purple and
plump as it does purple and wrinkled because the alleles separate into gametes independently of one
another during meiosis when the gametes are being formed and the chromosomes are separating.
Important To Remember: Purple is dominant and yellow is recessive while starchy (smooth) is
dominant while sugary (wrinkled) is recessive. Genotypes (genetic makeup of an individual) can have
dominant and/or recessive alleles. Homozygous dominant (both dominant alleles), heterozygous (one

dominant and one recessive allele), and homozygous recessive (both recessive alleles) are all possible
terms for describing an organism.