About the lecture

In the first mini-lecture, we discuss the history of our understanding of inheritance, as brought up in topics 3.11B of the Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Biology specification. We describe Gregor Mendel, a monk from the 19th century, and his work discovering the basis of genetics and recognise the difficulties of understanding inheritance before the mechanism was discovered. We analyse his work with pea plants with different characteristics, including plant height, flower colour, seed colour and seed shape to uncover genes and alleles, the genetic code responsible for these traits. To finish off, we learn about what Mendel concluded from this research by looking at his three laws of inheritance.

About the lecturer

Dr Matthew Ivory is a Lecturer at Cardiff University in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (2016-present). His key expertise is in ex vivo human skin organ culture and histology, human skin immune cell extraction and culture, flow cytometry and pharmaceutical formulation, and his research interests are in the delivery of vaccines and therapeutics into the skin. In addition to this, he is also a qualified pharmacist.