Gregor Mendel, who would later be credited as “The Father of Modern Genetics”, was born in Austria in 1822 with the name Johann Mendel. After completing his formal education, Johann joined the Augustinian order at the St. Thomas Monastery in Brno and was given the name Gregor. Around 1854, Mendel began to research the transmission of hereditary traits in plant hybrids. Mendel chose to use peas for his experiments due to their many distinct varieties, and because offspring could be quickly and easily produced. He cross-fertilized pea plants that had clearly opposite characteristics—tall with short, smooth with wrinkled, those containing green seeds with those containing yellow seeds, etc. Based on the results of his experiments, Mendel came to three important conclusions: (1) Dominance—recessive alleles will always be masked by dominant alleles (2) Segregation—The two members of a gene pair (alleles) segregate (separate) from each other in the formation of gametes. Half the gametes carry one allele, and the other half carry the other allele and (3) Independent Assortment—alleles of different genes are inherited independently of one another. Mendel’s experiments had been conducted with pea plants, and he found that the dominant traits in pea plants were round peas and yellow peas. The recessive traits were discovered to be wrinkled peas and green peas. Though he experimented with pea plants, Mendel put forth the theory that all living things had such traits. These traits can be predicted using a Punnett Square.
Create a Punnett Square to predict the chance that the offspring of a purple flower with a dominant trait (PP) and a white flower with a recessive trait (pp) will express the recessive trait (pp).