View source for Classical Genetics

Classical genetics refers to "garden experiments" in patterns of heredity and is how the field of genetics began.  

In classical genetics no molecular methods are required.  You work with easily observable phenotypes and, to a degree, control the crosses that occur.  Classical genetics developed a powerful framework of logic that allowed mechanisms of inheritance and gene interactions, that were not directly observable at the time, to be inferred to exist.  

The concept of true breeding "parental" lines, F<sub>1</sub> and F<sub>2</sub> crosses, Mendel's laws, and tools such as the Punnet square are used in classical genetics.  This is also where definitions of [[dominance]], [[zygosity]], and epistatic interactions originate.  

Moving into more modern classical genetics the field developed linkage mapping, test crosses, non-disjunction, and how these related to meiosis and a genes physical location on a chromosome.  

[[Forward Genetics]] isolates or creates mutants of a certain phenotype class, organizes them into genes by [[complementation crosses]], and determines their position on a chromosome by [[linkage mapping]].  Interactions between gene products can also be inferred by [[epistasis|epistatic interations]].