BI226- Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 65 pages long!)
Document Summary
A brief history of our understanding prior to mendel. Best known for the pythagorean theorem: a2 + b2 = c2. Father"s sperm flows through his body gathering information of his traits. Mother only provides nourishment of the fetus with no traits passed to offspring. Observed that traits can skip generations and that environmental changes to body are not passed onto offspring. Believed that sperm provided instructions to a female equivalent to produce fetus. Fetus was thought to be shaped from menstrual blood in the mother. This information transfer we now know to be dna. Swiss-german alchemist paracelsus thought that mini-humans in sperm could be incubated in horse-dung and be born after incubation for several months. Homonculus theory promoted further in 1694 by nicolaas hartsoeker, a dutch physicist and microscopist. It appeared that a mini-human was in sperm. Rock formation was not static, that some rocks had formed from pre-existing rock.
