Gregor Mendel, the Moravian monk lauded as the founder of genetics, was indeed decades ahead of his time. That is one of the conclusions of an international team of scientists who publish their findings in Nature Genetics as the 200th birthday of Mendel, approaches on July 20.

The authors, including a scientist from KeyGene in the Netherlands and one from the John Innes Centre in the UK, show that newly discovered historical sources support the idea that Mendel began his work with the practical objectives of a plant breeder. He then became interested in the underlying biological processes that condition the heritable differences between organisms. Mendel recognized the importance of understanding the formation of reproductive cells and the process of fertilization. The authors conclude that, when his proposals are viewed in the light of what was known of cells in the mid-19thcentury, Mendel was decades ahead of his time, and truly deserves the title of ‘founder of genetics’.

Mendel noted that pea plants must maintain and transmit the ‘code’ for the appearance of a trait. We now call these coding instructions genes, Mendel called them ‘Elemente’. For traits, often two different Elements are present, such as one which conditions purple and an alternative which conditions white flower colour.

Mendel proposed that in the male and female parts of the flower, reproductive cells are formed that contain only one type of Element, and these single Elements are transmitted to a daughter plant, one from the male and another from the female. We now know that indeed only half of the number of chromosomes is transmitted to egg cells in the female flower parts and pollen in the male flower parts, thanks to the so-called reduction division that is occurring during meiosis at the formation of gametes.

Source:  KeyGene July 11, 2022 news release