What are Mendelian traits?
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was a monk and biologist who studied how certain characteristics in pea plants were passed between generations. Mendel showed that the inheritance pattern followed a small number of rules, which were named after him. Put simply, Mendel said that individuals have two factors (now called alleles) for each trait, one inherited from each parent. These two alleles could be identical or different. When an individual reproduces, one of these two alleles is passed on to the offspring at random. So the offspring end up with two of the four alleles that the parents had. Fortunately for Mendel, the pea plant traits he picked were each controlled by a single gene, and each gene had just two alleles.
