"Experiments on Plant Hybridization" (
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
: "Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden") is a seminal paper written in 1865 and published in 1866 by
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel, Augustinians, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thomas' Abbey in Brà ...
, an Augustinian friar considered to be the founder of modern
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
. The paper was the result after years spent studying genetic traits in ''
Pisum sativum
The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the flowering plant species ''Pisum sativum''. Each pod contains several peas, which can be green or yellow. Botanically, pea pods are fruit, since they contain seeds and d ...
'', the pea plant.
Content
In his paper, Mendel compared 7 pairs of discrete traits found in a pea plant:
Through experimentation, Mendel discovered that one inheritable trait would invariably be dominant to its recessive alternative. Mendel laid out the genetic model later known as
Mendelian inheritance
Mendelian inheritance (also known as Mendelism) is a type of biological inheritance following the principles originally proposed by Gregor Mendel in 1865 and 1866, re-discovered in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns, and later popularize ...
or Mendelian genetics. This model provided an alternative to blending inheritance, which was the prevailing theory at the time.
History
Mendel read his paper to the Natural History Society of
Brünn
Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inha ...
. It was published in the ''
Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn
The ''Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn'' (German: ''Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn'') was the official journal of the Natural History Society in Brno (german: Brünn), published from 1861-1920. A free ar ...
'' the following year.
Mendel's work received little attention from the scientific community and was largely forgotten. It was not until the early 20th century that Mendel's work was rediscovered and his ideas used to help form the
modern synthesis
Modern synthesis or modern evolutionary synthesis refers to several perspectives on evolutionary biology, namely:
* Modern synthesis (20th century), the term coined by Julian Huxley in 1942 to denote the synthesis between Mendelian genetics and s ...
.
Analysis
In 1936, the statistician
Ronald Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was a British polymath who was active as a mathematician, statistician, biologist, geneticist, and academic. For his work in statistics, he has been described as "a genius who a ...
used a
Pearson's chi-squared test to analyze Mendel's data and concluded that Mendel's results with the predicted ratios were far too perfect, suggesting that adjustments (intentional or unconscious) had been made to the data to make the observations fit the hypothesis.
Later authors have suggested Fisher's analysis was flawed, proposing various statistical and botanical explanations for Mendel's numbers.
It is also possible that Mendel's results are "too good" merely because he reported the best subset of his data—Mendel mentioned in his paper that the data were from a subset of his experiments.
References
{{reflist
Gregor Mendel
Botanical literature
1865 documents
1866 documents
1865 in biology
1866 in biology