BIOL 112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Gregor Mendel, Heredity, Zygosity

• School: McGill University
• Department: Biology
• Course: BIOL 112
• Professor: Joseph Dent

Document Summary

By discussing heredity as a function of how cells divide, we have ignored the historical order of discovery. Long before organisms were understood to be made up of cells, people tried to understand the patterns underlying inheritance. There is a fundamental and fascinating puzzle that underlies inheritance. The puzzle of heredity is that children resemble their parents but no children of the same parents are exactly alike (except identical twins). People have been aware of this puzzle for a very long time. In fact, i would argue that people pondered the riddle of heredity ever since they understood that animals (including humans) have a mother and a father. For better or for worse, we are keenly aware of skin color. Therefore i imagine that you have observed that two africans (who have the trait of dark skin) never have caucasian children (who have the trait of light skin) and vice versa.