Čes-slov Pediat 2022, 77(4):189-197 | DOI: 10.55095/CSPediatrie2022/031

Gregor Mendel celebrates 200 years: from the gardens of the Augustinian monastery in Brno to the causal treatment of monogenic diseasesComprehensive Report

Ondřej Slabý^{1, 2}, Ondřej Dostál¹, Kateřina Slabá³

¹ Biologický ústav, Lékařská fakulta, Masarykova univerzita, Brno

² Ústav patologie, FN Brno

³ Pediatrická klinika, FN Brno

This year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gregor Mendel's birth. Mendel was not recognized for his scientific work during his lifetime. It was not until 16 long years after his death that his work was rediscovered to lay the foundations for a new field - genetics. Mendel>s contribution lay not only in his own experiments and their results, but above all in the methodological innovation that consisted in the use of mathematics and statistics in biologic al research, which was something completely new for the then purely descriptive biological sciences. Interestingly, Mendel' s motivation was not to expand human knowledge. Mendel, as he himself stated in the introduction to his work, was interested in the principles of heredity so that he could breed better and better ornamental plants. This desire for improvement was also reflected in his other re search activities in the field of beekeeping or meteorology. Although he never had a university degree, Mendel was a very popular teacher. He was the head of one of the largest and richest monasteries in Moravia. His life and work, his followers and the builders of his legacy, the history of medical genetics in our country, as well as the contributions of Mendelian genetics to modern medicine are discussed in our review.

Keywords: Gregor Mendel, life, scientific work, followers, medical genetics

Published: August 25, 2022  Show citation