Genetics

            Genetics is a powerful field of science, with many possibilities.
             animals to achieve the desired results has been done since domestication itself. The actual .
             study of genetics started long ago, with Mendel and his studies. Now scientists know much .
             more of genetics and DNA. However, with the increased knowledge comes increases power, and .
             with power comes the potential to abuse it. With the potential to abuse power comes ethical .
             questions on what the humans race should do with this power.
             The Austrian Monk Gregor Mendel discovered the basics of genetics. He was trained in .
             physics, then was recruited to a monastery to do some research in breeding plants and .
             animals. Mendel preformed his experiments with the pea plant, and found that a basic ratio .
             of things, such as the color of flowers, was always 1:3. This means that from every mating .
             of two pea plants, one would have a certain trait for every three plants that had a .
             different trait. For example, three plants would have white leaves for every one with pink .
             leaves. He concluded from this that there had to be some sort of basic law of heredity. .
             Mendel explained this by saying that parent plants had two factors, and that only one of the .
             factors was passed down to the new plant. Mendel said that his factors must be present it .
             pairs, two in each individual for each separate characteristic. He concluded that since an .
             individual organism is formed from the union of one egg and one sperm, that only one factor .
             was present in eggs and sperm, but when they united, the number was returned to two. Mendel .
             proposed his ideas of heredity in 1866, and it has later been proven that for all traits, at .
             least two different genes exist (Gene Search Then and Now). There is usually a dominant .
             trait and a recessive one, and the recessive trait is not visible because of the dominant .
             one. There have been other elaborate breeding experiments to prove this (Harris 16).