Biology 2nd Edition by Robert Brooker, Eric Widmaier ,Linda Graham ,Peter Stiling

Exercise 13

As discussed in Chapter 16, Mendel studied seven characters in pea plants, and the garden pea happens to have seven different chromosomes. It has been pointed out that Mendel was very lucky not to have conducted crosses involving two traits that are closely linked on the same chromosome because the results would have confounded his theory of independent assortment. It has even been suggested that Mendel may not have published data involving traits that were linked. An article by S. Blixt ("Why Didn't Gregor Mendel Find Linkage " Nature 256:206[1975]) considers this issue. Look up this article and discuss why Mendel did not find linkage.