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I've always thought that Mendel discovered genetics, but from a practical and experimental side. Darwin's work focused on longer timescales. But I don't know ho
by thearn4 10y ago
I've always thought that Mendel discovered genetics, but from a practical and experimental side. Darwin's work focused on longer timescales. But I don't know how accurate that summary would be.
- Noseshine 10y agoHere is a short excerpt (5 minutes) of an MIT lecture video that tells you a lot about Mendel and where he came from: https://youtu.be/D8m-ZEr9qV8?t=276 https://youtu.be/D8m-ZEr9qV8?t=276 The full course is here - I cannot recommend it enough, the professor is pure gold(!): https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-mitx-7-00x-4 https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-... Mendel was brilliant - but actually also a bit unlucky (or lucky?). All the traits he checked in his peas were on different chromosomes. He missed the deeper insights resulting form the confusion when inheritance of traits isn't independent, when genes were located on the same chromosome. That lead to the discovery of more mechanisms of inheritance... the random rearrangement of sections of chromosomes that takes place during meiosis.
- azakai 10y agoDarwin discovered the mechanism of natural selection, "survival of the fittest". That requires traits to be heritable, passed from parents to children. Mendel discovered how that works in practice, and in particular, that it was a discrete mechanism - each gene has a finite number of states.