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| Laws of Inheritance |
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| Mendel explained the mechanism of inheritance with the help of laws he formulated based on his experiments. These laws are: |
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 Law of unit characters |
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Law of Dominance |
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Law of Segregation |
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Law of Independent Assortment |
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| According to this law, all the traits are separate entities or units by themselves. Their inheritance is controlled by factors, now called genes. |
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| Each gene has more than one form of expression. These forms of expressions are called alleles or allelomorphs. Each pair of alleles will have a dominant allele and a recessive allele. In the presence of the dominant gene, the recessive gene will never express itself. Only if both the alleles are recessive, the recessive trait will be exhibited. |
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| This is also called the law of purity of gametes. According to this law, the gametes are pure for a particular trait. This is because the alleles of a pair separate during gamete formation and again come together after fertilization. Therefore, in each gamete only either of the two alleles is present and it is pure for that trait. |
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| This law explains how more than one trait is inherited. According to this law, when there are two pairs of alleles, all four alleles assert themselves independently and are inherited independently. |
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