Gregor Mendel: The Father Of DNA

We may resemble our parents, but we are never exactly like them, this because of inheritance. The genetic characters transmitted from parent to offspring. This is because each child gets only some of the DNA each parent carries. About half of our DNA comes from our mother and the other half comes from our father, the parts we get though are basically random. Identical twins are the only people that have identical DNA. DNA appears like a twisted ladder called a double helix (double spiral). A double helix is made up of multiple nucleotides which are made up of a phosphate, sugar and base. A nucleotide is a molecule that forms the structure of DNA. A gene is a section of DNA which has a code for a particular characteristic, this code is made up of bases and complimentary pairs. There are 4 different bases that make up a gene, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine. The 4 bases are separated into 2 pairs. Adenine and Thymine are a pair and Cytosine and Guanine are a pair. It is in these pairs that information/ traits are stored. Many scientists have contributed to the discovery of DNA such as Gregor Mendel, Frederick Griffiths, Oswald Avery, James Watson and Francis Crick.

Gregor Mendel is the father of genetics he got this name through his work on pea plants. Through his work on pea plants he discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance. Mendel made his mathematically determined discoveries through observations and research performed between 1856 – 1863. Mendel and never had the chance to see how his great work had such a massive impact on the world of science, he would later become one of the most famous scientists of all time. Gregor Mendel was not the first to put forward genetics however, he was the first to figure out that ...

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...d sheet metal to represent the molecule's chainlike structure. They were both very aware that DNA could have had a general, winding shape of a helix, but what still remained a mystery to Watson and Crick was how DNA's four bases (adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine) were arranged around a sugar and phosphate backbone.

“On February 21, 1953, Watson could see the finished structure, he had recognized how two pairs of complementary bases (adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine) would have identical shapes if held together by hydrogen bonds, two long chains of such base pairs would likely form a double helix—roughly, the shape of an enormously long, winding, doubled-railed staircase. The DNA molecule, comprised of long strands of such base pairs in specific and varied sequences, could embed genetic information that, if the strands were separated, could be copied.”