Page "Mendelian inheritance" Paragraph 5

The Law of Independent Assortment, also known as " Inheritance Law ", states that separate genes for separate traits are passed independently of one another from parents to offspring.

That is, the biological selection of a particular gene in the gene pair for one trait to be passed to the offspring has nothing to do with the selection of the gene for any other trait.

More precisely, the law states that alleles of different genes assort independently of one another during gamete formation.

While Mendel's experiments with mixing one trait always resulted in a 3: 1 ratio ( Fig.

1 ) between dominant and recessive phenotypes, his experiments with mixing two traits ( dihybrid cross ) showed 9: 3: 3: 1 ratios ( Fig.

2 ).

But the 9: 3: 3: 1 table shows that each of the two genes is independently inherited with a 3: 1 phenotypic ratio.

Mendel concluded that different traits are inherited independently of each other, so that there is no relation, for example, between a cat's color and tail length.

This is actually only true for genes that are not linked to each other.