Mendel's
garden
(Augustinian
Monastery
of St. Thomas, Brno, Czech Republic)
Mendel's
garden
(Augustinian
Monastery
of St. Thomas, Brno, Czech Republic)
Mendel conducted
his experiments both in a greenhouse and in outdoor garden
plots. A statue of Mendel appears in the
background. The garden plot shown here is laid out as a
series of crosses between flowers, starting from the upper
right. The parental plants (P)
have short red and tall white flowers (top
row). From these pure-breeding red- and white-flowered plants,
the F1 is uniformly short & red (single
patch, second row). The third row shows an F2 produced by a self-cross of F1 plants: note the 3:1 ratio of red to white flowers.
The following 4
x 4 layout show the result of a dihybrid cross. Closer inspection shows that in the P
generation, the white flowers are also tall,
in contrast to the red flowers that are short.
These two phenotypes can be followed through the crosses in
combination with the color variants.
Homework: Evaluate the
results of the dihybrid cross. Is there anything unusual about
the results?