Mendelism refers to the principles of inheritance, particularly concerning single-gene traits, that are based on the pioneering work of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). Mendel was a Moravian monk and biologist who laid down the foundational laws of classical genetics. Residing in an Augustinian monastery that valued education and research, Mendel had the opportunity to explore his scientific interests in fields like mathematics, botany, physics, and meteorology. His carefully designed experiments with pea plants in the monastery garden revealed that hereditary factors (now known as genes) are not mixtures of parental traits but are distinct physical units passed down individually through generations.Initially, Mendel's groundbreaking findings, published in 1865, went largely unrecognized. Even Charles Darwin, who received a copy of Mendel's paper, did not read it. The only scientist to acknowledge it at the time, a German botanist named Nägeli, misunderstood its significance. It wasn't until 1900, sixteen years after Mendel's death, that his work was independently rediscovered by three different scientists. This rediscovery cemented Mendel's legacy as the father of genetics.Mendelian inheritance describes the way genes and traits are transmitted from parents to offspring. The patterns of Mendelian inheritance include autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive, X-linked dominant, and X-linked recessive.
