How Mendel's pea plants helped us understand genetics - Hortensia Jiménez Díaz
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-mendel-s-pea-plants-helped-us-understand-genetics-hortensia-jimenez-diaz Each father and mother pass down traits to their children, who inherit...
========== Translator: Andrea McDonough
Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar These days scientists know how you inherit characteristics
from your parents. They're able to calculate probabilities
of having a specific trait or getting a genetic disease according to the information
from the parents and the family history. But how is this possible? To understand how traits pass
from one living being to its descendants, we need to go back in time
to the 19th century and a man named Gregor Mendel. Mendel was an Austrian monk and biologist who loved to work with plants. By breeding the pea plants
he was growing in the monastery's garden, he discovered the principles
that rule heredity. In one of most classic examples, Mendel combined
a purebred yellow-seeded plant with a...