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 red and white flowers (top row). From
these pure-breeding red- and white-flowered plants, the F1 is
uniformly red (single patch, second row). The third row shows
the result of an F2 cross of the F1
back to the white P plants: note the 3:1 ratio of red to white
flowers. The remaining 4 x 4 layout show the result of a
dihybrid cross.
Close inspection
shows that the white flowers in the P generation are tall,
in contrast to the short red flowers. 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?