It was only a little more than 100 years ago that first serious study of genetics was undertaken by Austrian Monk Gregor Mendel in his pea patch. He crossed strains of peas and studied the results of these crosses changes in color, shape, size and other properties of peas. He published his work entitled experiments with plant hybrids in 1865. The laws of heredity first formulated by Mendel are common to all forms of life. They apply to humans just as well as to the “lowly” bacterium. Genetics is the study of the inheritance (heredity) and the variability of the characteristics of an organism.