Mendel's Second Law of Independent Assortment: Understanding Genetic Inheritance

What is Mendel's Second Law of Independent Assortment?

1) Mendel's First Law 2) Mendel's Second Law 3) Mendel's Third Law 4) Mendel's Fourth Law

Final answer: Mendel's Second Law

Answer:

Mendel's Second Law, the Law of Independent Assortment, suggests that the inheritance pattern of one trait won't affect the inheritance of another. The traits sort independently, except when alleles are close on the same chromosome.

Explanation: The Law of Independent Assortment, also known as Mendel's Second Law, is a principle developed from Mendel's experiments with pea plants. This law states that the inheritance pattern of one trait will not affect the inheritance pattern of another, thereby allowing every possible combination of alleles for every gene, which is equally likely to occur.

In Mendel's observations, the alleles associated with different traits of the plants, such as color, height, or seed type, sorted independently of one another except when two alleles were located close to each other on the same chromosome.

The law can be illustrated with the dihybrid cross, a cross between two true-breeding parents that express different traits for two characteristics. Consider the characteristics of seed color and seed texture for two pea plants, one with wrinkled, green seeds (rryy), and another with round, yellow seeds (RRYY). Because each parent is homozygous, the law of segregation indicates that the gametes for the wrinkled-green plant all are ry, and the gametes for the round-yellow plant are all RY. This results in the F₁ generation of offspring being all RrYy.