The ancestor of genetics

Humanity has been witnessing great achievements of biology in general and genetics in particular. Perhaps, anyone who is interested in biology or has been in high school remembered Gregor Johann Mendel, the ancestor of genetics. His genetic rule has been the foundation for today's biotechnology.

Mendel's merit in biology was likened to Newton's merit in physics. But in his day, people were not aware of the great importance and value that Mendel's research brought to mankind. In the eyes of everyone at the time, he was just an anonymous monk, an amateur scientist. But the wrong judgments of the scientific world did not stop Mendel from doing research. He still silently explored and discovered as if a need itself.

Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822, in the Moravia region, the Austrian empire (now the Czech Republic), in a poor peasant family.From an early age, he was always interested in taking care of plants in the garden.

At the age of 18, Mendel graduated from high school with an excellent grade and was sent to study philosophy. Three years later, he had to quit school because his family was too poor and asked to work at Augustinian Monastery in Brunn city (now Brno, Czech Republic).

In 1847, Mendel was ordained a missionary by the Church and two years later, he was assigned to teach mathematics and Greek at the monastery. In 1851, he returned to study Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Zoology and Botany at the University of Vienna. In 1853, after graduating, Mendel returned to live in Augustinian monastery and taught at the City's Practical College.

With a strong knowledge of science, Mendel focused on research. The area in which he particularly cares and spends a lot of time researching is biological science .

In 1856, he began elaborate experiments on peas. Mendel found that pea plants had a special flower structure, protecting the pollen from stalks that were not scattered. Therefore, when it is necessary to allow flowers to pollinate or pick up this pollen, it is easy and secure to pollinate other flowers, indicating the exact plant and mother tree.

His experiments are both experimental and mathematical in nature. Mendel used 7 pairs of traits to carry out breeding: slippery seeds - wrinkled seeds, yellow seeds - green seeds, red flowers - white flowers, flowers growing in leaf axils - flowers growing on tops, long stalk flowers - smooth stalk flowers , smooth fruit - wrinkled fruit, green fruit - yellow fruit. Based on the results of the above hybrid practices, he introduced 3 basic rules of genetics .

Statistics of Mendel's experimental traits

The first rule is the law of dominance. When parents in the purebred (P) generation are different in terms of a contrasting trait, in F1 generation all hybrids exhibit only some characteristics of a parent or parent, that characteristic is called is dominant.

The second rule is the law of segregation of characteristics. To confirm the separation, Mendel conducted two experiments. First, for self-pollinated F1 heterozygous individuals; the second is for F1 to cross back to a parent with a diving pattern. This hybrid gives results: When F1 self-pollinated or cross-pollinated plants, in F2, there will be 'dominant' trees and 'diving' plants, at the rate of 3 dominant (3T) + 1 dive ( 1 L).

The third rule is the independent separation law of pairs of characteristics . Mendel discovered that when crossing two pure plants, different in two or more contrast traits, the inheritance of this pair of traits does not depend on the genetics of the other trait pair.

For eight years (1856-1863), Mendel conducted experiments on about 37,000 beans and 300,000 beans. He proved heredity by genetic factors (now called genes) . In 1865 Mendel brought this result presented at Brunn City's Natural Science Society and a year later, the genetic results were published in the Society's journal under the heading 'Some experimental hybrid plants. '. But then, everyone thought that contemporary genetic hypotheses were extremely complex, while Mendel's experiment was 'too simple' . Therefore, his research was sunk into oblivion.

Despite this, he still worked hard and taught and preached and continued to do experiments in the monastery garden. In 1868, Mendel was appointed Archbishop and was appointed Monastery Director in 1879. He was also the founder of the Nature Research Association and the Meteorological Society of Brunn city.

On January 6, 1884, Mendel died in Brno, Czech Republic, aged 62 years. It was only six years after Mendel's death that his precious studies were known to mankind, through independent studies, but at the same time in 1900 by three scientists in three different countries: Hugo Marie de Vries in the Netherlands, Carl Correns in Germany and Erich Tschermark of Austria.

Although Mendel's research on genetics is quite late, scientists still see 1900 as ' the milestone marking the birth of genetics' and Mendel is still ' The ancestor of genetics'.

A sample of stamps printed on Mendel biology

Over a century has passed, genetics has made a remarkable step, helping biology become a key of modern science along with the strong development of Genetic Technology and International Technology. Cells, Microbial Technology, Enzyme Technology / Protein.

It is the cloning technique for creating Wilmut's Dolly sheep (1997), the success of the Human Genome Decoding Project (2001) and most recently the application of stem cells to deserve the treat many dangerous diseases.

It all originated from experiments to breed peas nearly 160 years ago by Gregor Mendel.