Write your answer in the space below. Heredity is the passing on of traits from parent to
offspring. Heritable information is important for life to
continue. What is the role of meiosis in heredity?

Explanation:

Perhaps the most fundamental property of all living things is the ability to reproduce. All organisms inherit the genetic information specifying their structure and function from their parents. Likewise, all cells arise from preexisting cells, so the genetic material must be replicated and passed from parent to progeny cell at each cell division. How genetic information is replicated and transmitted from cell to cell and organism to organism thus represents a question that is central to all of biology. Consequently, elucidation of the mechanisms of genetic transmission and identification of the genetic material as DNA were discoveries that formed the foundation of our current understanding of biology at the molecular level.

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Genes and Chromosomes

The classical principles of genetics were deduced by Gregor Mendel in 1865, on the basis of the results of breeding experiments with peas. Mendel studied the inheritance of a number of well-defined traits, such as seed color, and was able to deduce general rules for their transmission. In all cases, he could correctly interpret the observed patterns of inheritance by assuming that each trait is determined by a pair of inherited factors, which are now called genes. One gene copy (called an allele) specifying each trait is inherited from each parent. For example, breeding two strains of peas—one having yellow seeds, and the other green seeds—yields the following results (Figure 3.1). The parental strains each have two identical copies of the gene specifying yellow (Y) or green (y) seeds, respectively. The progeny plants are therefore hybrids, having inherited one gene for yellow seeds (Y) and one for green seeds (y). All these progeny plants (the first filial, or F1, generation) have yellow seeds, so yellow (Y) is said to be dominant and green (y) recessive. The genotype (genetic composition) of the F1 peas is thus Yy, and their phenotype (physical appearance) is yellow. If one F1 offspring is bred with another, giving rise to F2 progeny, the genes for yellow and green seeds segregate in a characteristic manner such that the ratio between F2 pl