law of segregation
- noun
- Specialized
:
ley de la segregación
- According to the law of segregation, alleles separate during gamete formation.
Examples
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The law of segregation helps explain why offspring inherit one allele from each parent.
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Mendel's experiments with peas were crucial in formulating the law of segregation.
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Biology students must understand the law of segregation to grasp basic genetic inheritance.
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The law of segregation is fundamental to understanding genetics.
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Mendel's experiments with peas were crucial in formulating the law of segregation.
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The law of segregation helps explain why offspring inherit one allele from each parent.
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According to the law of segregation, alleles separate during gamete formation.
Surface Forms
Morphology
law + of + segregation
The phrase is compositionally transparent: 'law' means a principle or rule and 'segregation' denotes the separation/distribution of alleles, so 'law of segregation' straightforwardly denotes the principle about segregation. Although it is a technical genetics term, the noun + of + noun construction is cross-linguistically common, so a learner who knows the constituent meanings can infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The term law of segregation comes from Gregor Mendel's pea experiments, where he watched pairs of traits split apart as plants made seeds. He saw that the two versions of a trait 'separate' so each seed or child gets only one, so segregation means 'to separate' and law means 'rule', which is why the phrase names the rule that each sex cell gets one member of a pair.
