The following is an adaptation of a report that I had talked about earlier in my junior year about a historical figure as a presentation. All info below is copyrighted by me, so don’t try to take it from me. The below is also a view that I completely disown, so it isn’t mine anymore. So simply, it’s copyrighted, but probably incorrect, so don’t try to use it for anything important. Or at all. Because it’s copyrighted, you see. It’s also to test the capabilities of the nice Word 2003™ (that’s supposed to be TM, but it didn’t show up last time I tried to post it, so I’m not sure it’ll show up now) plugin for blogger.

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Do you know where kids come from? Not from an Austrian Priest who lived in complete celibacy for 61 years. Today I will be telling you about Gregor Mendel: His early life, his experiments, and the laws of heredity that originated as a result of his work. I know that I am experienced with this subject because I have researched Mendel, particularly his research (ironically), quite extensively for the past month. Without Mendel’s work, we might have never come to know about the genetic code and DNA or how it works.
Firstly I will inform you about Mendel’s early life. Mendel was born in Heizendorf, Austria on July 22nd 1822. *^As a child, he worked as a gardener and spent much of his time around plants. When he got older, he attended the Olmutz Philosophical Institution for a few years. He later entered the Augustinian Order and became a priest. He was then moved to Vienna to teach classes on Physics and Natural Science.
Secondly, I will tell you about his experiments. While he was in Vienna, he condoned various experiments on pea plants and beans. He would take the plants, cross-fertilize them, and note the resulting characteristics in the offspring (such as if the plant is short or tall, skinny or thick, etc). Unlike other scientists, Mendel was successful in finding the fundamental principles of heredity because he firstly, chose which characteristics of the plants could be more apparently seen in the offspring (how many leaves the parents had compared to how many leaves the offspring had, rather short vs. tall). Secondly, he not only studied the offspring of the plants, but the offspring’s offspring (would take and cross-fertilize the offspring). Thirdly, he counted out the different types of plants that were showing a certain characteristic and analyzed the results mathematically with ratios. And lastly, he organized his data so that it was easier to read and thus the experiment could be replicated by other scientists for verification of the results. He published two papers on the subject but his experiments were left unnoticed until after his death when a few scientists replicated his experiments and found them to be true.
Thirdly, I will tell you about the hereditary laws that originated from Mendel’s work. There’s a quote from wiki “Only a few would accuse Mendel of scientific malpractice or call it a scientific fraud” {Wikipedia.org}. This is simply because his experiments have been verified and the following principles have been developed from them. The first is the principle of segregation that states that each individual carries pairs of factors for the specific characteristics. For example, in a tall pea plant, the plant contains two pairs of factors for the tallness trait and since tallness is a dominant trait, the factors can either be both dominant, or one dominant and one recessive letting the dominant factor override the recessive factor. The short plant, thus, can only have two recessive factors and can only pass on recessive factors to the next generation. The second is the principle of independent assortment which basically states that the factors of one trait do not affect the factors of another trait. So it doesn’t matter whether the plant is tall or short, the pods it produces may be yellow or green regardless. And vice versa, the greenness of the pod does not affect whether or not the plant will be short.
In conclusion I have informed you about Mendel’s early life, his experiments, and his basic hereditary principles. Because of his work, scientists were able to continue on his experiments and discover such things as the genetic code, DNA, and other hereditary principles. Not having to worry about kids disrupting Mendel’s work might have been a very good thing.