CLASS X

Chapter - 9

HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION

9.1 - Accumulation of variation during reproduction

9.2 - Heredity
9.2.1 - Inherited Traits
9.2.2 -Rules for the Inheritance of Traits – Mendel’s Contributions
9.2.3 - How do these Traits get Expressed?
9.2.4 - Sex Determination

CREATION OF DIVERSITY OVER SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS.

Some amount of variation is produced even during asexual reproduction.

This is illustrated by the following example which depicts a bacterium reproducing asexually.
If one bacterium divides, and then the resultant two bacteria divide again, the four individual bacteria generated
would be very similar. There would be only very minor differences between them, generated due to small
inaccuracies in DNA copying.

All the variations in a species DO NOT have equal chances of surviving in the environment .
Depending on the nature of variations, different individuals would have different kinds of advantages. For ex.
Bacteria that can withstand heat will survive better in a heat wave. Selection of variants by environmental factors
forms the basis for evolutionary processes
Genetics - is a branch of biology which deals with principles of inheritance and its practices.
Inheritance- is the process by which characters are passed on from parents to the offspring.
Traits- are physical characteristics you inherit from your parents. Each trait can be influenced by both paternal and
maternal DNA.

RULES FOR THE INHERITANCE OF TRAITS – MENDEL’S CONTRIBUTIONS

Both the father and the mother contribute practically equal amounts of genetic material to the child.
Each trait can be influenced by both paternal and maternal DNA. Thus, for each trait there will be two versions in
each child. Mendel worked out the main rules of such inheritance, and it is interesting to look at some of his
experiments from more than a century ago.
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822–1884) Mendel was educated in a monastery and went on to study science and
mathematics at the University of Vienna. Failure in the examinations for a teaching certificate did not suppress his
zeal for scientific quest. He went back to his monastery and started growing peas. Many others had studied the
inheritance of traits in peas and other organisms earlier, but Mendel blended his knowledge of science and
mathematics and was the first one to keep count of individuals exhibiting a particular trait in each generation. This
helped him to arrive at the laws of inheritance
Mendel conducted hybridization experiments on garden peas and proposed the laws of inheritance based on the
results.
Advantages of selecting pea plant for the experiments:
1. The pea plant can be easily grown and maintained.
2. They are naturally self-pollinating but can also be cross-pollinated.
3. It is an annual plant, therefore, many generations can be studied within a short period of time.
Mendel used a number of contrasting visible characters of garden pea.

KEY TERMS

 Homologous chromosomes- Homologous chromosomes are chromosomes pairs (one from each parent) that are
similar in length, gene position, and centromere location.

 Genes (called as factors by Mendel) - A gene is a small section of DNA that contains the instructions for a
specific molecule, usually a protein.

 Alleles- Alleles are variant form of a gene which are located at the same position, or genetic locus .Humans have
two alleles at each genetic locus, with one allele inherited from each parent.
 Genotype-is the genetic make up of an organism
 Phenotype- The physical traits and characteristics of an organism resulting from their genetic makeup.
 Homozygous /Heterozygous-In humans, alleles of particular genes come in pairs, one on each chromosome (we
have 23 pairs of chromosomes). If the alleles of a particular gene are the same, the organism is described as
homozygous for that gene. Ex-TT/tt. If they are different the organism is described as heterozygous for that
gene.Ex-Tt
 Punnett Square-A diagram that shows the gene combinations that might result from a genetic cross of two
parents.
 Monohybrid and Dihybrid cross -can be differentiated on the basis of the number of traits being studied in the
offspring. In a monohybrid cross, the inheritance of a single gene is predicted while in a dihybrid cross
inheritance of two different characteristics are studied.

MENDEL’S EXPERIMENTS

MONOHYBRID CROSS
He took true breeding pea plants (If allowed to self pollinate they produce off springs identical to themselves) with
different characteristics – a tall plant and a short plant, produced progeny from them, and calculated the percentages
of tall or short progeny.
OBSERVATION

 There were no halfway characteristics in the first generation, or F1 progeny – no ‘medium-height’ plants. All
plants were tall. This meant that only one of the parental traits was seen, not some mixture of the two.
 In order to test whether the tall plants in the F1 generation were exactly the same as the tall plants of the parent
generation , Mendel allowed both the parental plants and these F1 tall plants to reproduce by self-pollination.
The progeny of the parental plants were all tall. However, the second-generation, or F2, progeny of the F1 tall
plants were not all tall. Instead, one quarter of them are short(3:1) This indicates that both the tallness and
shortness traits were inherited in the F1 plants, but only the tallness trait was expressed.

CONCLUSION
 Thus, two copies of the trait are inherited in each sexually reproducing organism. These two may be identical, or
may be different, depending on the parentage.
 Both TT and Tt are tall plants, while only tt is a short plant. In other words, a single copy of ‘T’ is enough to make
the plant tall, while both copies have to be ‘t’ for the plant to be short. Traits like ‘T’ are called dominant traits,
while those that behave like ‘t’ are called recessive traits.
 Mendel suggested that the alleles for tallness and shortness in the F1 plants were segregated from each other
during the formation of gametes. Therefore each F1 plant produces two types of gametes-those with the alleles
for tallness and those with the allele for shortness.
Activity In fig what experiment would you do to confirm that the F2 generation did in fact have a 1:2:1 ratio of
TT:Tt:tt trait combinations?
Ans - To confirm the genotypic ratio test cross is done. The F2 plants are crossed with a pure-breeding recessive
plant. This is called a test cross.
Different genotypes give different results
TT x tt  Tt All off springs will be tall
Tt x tt  50% will be tall
 HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION
CLASS - X
CH: HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION
(PPT NO:2)
Heredity and Evolution Contd…
Topics covered
 9.2.2 Rules for the Inheritance of Traits –Mendel’s Contributions
 9.2.3 How do these Traits get Expressed?
 9.2.4 Sex Determination
DIHYBRID CROSS
In A dihybrid cross Mendel studied inheritance of two different characters simultaneously.
 Mendel crossed pea plants that differed in two characters, for example a pea plant that has seeds with yellow
colour and round shape was crossed with one that had seeds of green colour and wrinkled shape.
 Mendel found that the seeds resulting from the crossing of the parents, had yellow coloured and round shaped
seeds in the F1 generation.
 Thus, yellow colour was dominant over green and round shape dominant over wrinkled.
 These results were identical to those that he got when he made separate monohybrid crosses taking one character
at a time for seed colour and seed shape.

 Let us use the genotypic symbols Y for dominant yellow seed colour and y for recessive green seed colour, R for
round shaped seeds and r for wrinkled seed shape.
 The genotype of the parents can then be written as RRyy and rrYY
 The gametes Ry and rY unite on fertilisation to produce the F1 hybrid RrYy.
When Mendel self hybridised the F1 plants the phenotypes round, yellow: round green: wrinkled yellow: wrinkled
green appeared in the ratio 9:3:3:1.
Based upon such observations on dihybrid crosses (crosses between plants differing in two characters) Mendel
proposed the Law of Independent Assortment. The law states that ‘when two pairs of traits are combined in a
hybrid, segregation of one pair of trait is independent of the other pair of trait.

How do these traits get Expressed?

Ans - Cellular DNA is the information source for making proteins in the cell. A section of DNA that provides
information for one protein is called the gene for that protein.
How do proteins control the characteristics that we are discussing here?
Ans-Let us take the example of tallness as a characteristic. Plants have hormones that can trigger growth. Plant height
can thus depend on the amount of a particular plant hormone. The amount of the plant hormone made will depend
on the efficiency of the process for making it. Consider now an enzyme that is important for this process. If this
enzyme works efficiently, a lot of hormone will be made, and the plant will be tall. If the gene for that enzyme has an
alteration that makes the enzyme less efficient, the amount of hormone will be less, and the plant will be short. Thus,
genes control expression of characters.
RECAPITULATION
 Both parents contribute equally to the DNA of the progeny during sexual reproduction.
 If both parents can help determine the trait in the progeny, both parents must be contributing a copy of the same
gene. This means that each pea plant must have two sets of all genes, one inherited from each parent. For this
mechanism to work, each germ cell must have only one gene set.
 Genes are present on chromosomes which are present in pairs. During gamete formation when meiosis takes
place only one chromosome from each pair is passed in a gamete .A chromosome may have more than one gene
on it .All such genes present on a chromosome are said to be linked genes.
 Thus, each cell will have two copies of each chromosome, one each from the male and female parents. Every
germ cell will take one chromosome from each pair and these may be of either maternal or paternal origin. When
two germ cells combine, they will restore the normal number of chromosomes in the progeny, ensuring the
stability of the DNA of the species. Such a mechanism of inheritance explains the results of the Mendel
experiments, and is used by all sexually reproducing organisms.
MENDEL’S LAW OF INHERITANCE
Law Of Dominance-In a monohybrid cross ,the traits which expresses itself in the heterozygous condition is called
dominant trait whereas the trait that does not express itself in the presence of the dominant trait is called the recessive
trait.
Law Of Segregation- During gamete formation the two factors responsible for a character segregate from each other.
Law Of Independent Assortment- The law states that ‘when two pairs of traits are combined in a hybrid, segregation
of one pair of trait is independent of the other pair of trait

How is the sex of a newborn individual determined?

ENVIRONMENTAL SEX DETERMINATION
Sex of the offspring is determined by environmental variables (such as temperature) and not the genes e.g. in few
reptiles, like turtles and lizards the temperature at which fertilised eggs are kept determines whether the offspring
will be male or female. In snails, individuals can change sex.
Genetic sex determination
Genes inherited from the parents decide the sex of the offspring.e.g. Human beings
Sex Determination in Human Beings

SEX DETERMINATION IN HUMAN BEINGS

• Out of 23 pairs of chromosomes present in human beings 22 pairs are exactly same in both males and females;
these are autosomes
• One pair, called the sex chromosomes, is odd in not always being a perfect pair. Women have a perfect pair of sex
chromosomes, both called X.
• Men have a mismatched pair in which one is a normal-sized X while the other is a short one called Y.
• So women are XX, while men are XY.
• All children inherit an X chromosome from their mother regardless of whether they are boys or girls.

Thus, the sex of the children will be determined by what they inherit from their father. A child who inherits an X
chromosome from her father will be a girl, and one who inherits a Y chromosome from him will be a boy.
SPECIATION
The process by which new species develop from the existing species is known as speciation.
The important factors which could lead to the rise (or formation ) of a new species are :
 Geographical isolation of a population caused by various types of barriers (such as mountain ranges, rivers and
seas).The geographical isolation leads to reproductive isolation due to which gene flow between the separated
groups of population through the gametes will decrease.
 Genetic drift caused by drastic changes in the frequencies of particular gene by chance alone.
 Variations caused in individuals due to natural selection/natural selection of variants.
It should be noted that the geographical isolation is one of the factors in the speciation of sexually reproducing
animals because it interrupts the flow of genes between their isolated population.
The geographical isolation cannot be a major factor in the speciation of a self pollinated plants species because it does
not have to link to other plants for the process of reproduction to be carried out.
The geographical isolation cannot be a major factor in the speciation of an asexually reproducing organisms because it
does not require any other organism to carry out reproduction.
Gene flow is the movement of genes into or out of the population