Biology: Walter Sutton and inheritance

Walter Sutton

Walter Sutton - (1877-1916) was an American geneticist who studied the cells of grasshoppers. He was trying to figure out how sex cells form. During his studies, he examined  sex cells many different stages of formation. He was interested in the movement of chromosomes during the formation of sex cells. He said that chromosomes were the key to understanding how offspring come to have traits similar to those of their parents.
Chromosomes carry Mendel's hereditary factors, from one generation to the next. In other words, genes are located on chromosomes.

Chromosome Theory of Inheritance 

Genes are carried from parents to their offspring on chromosomes.

Meiosis is the process by which the number of chromosomes is reduced by half to form sex cells-sperm and eggs.
During meiosis, the chromosome pairs separate and are distributed to two different cells. The resulting sex cells have only half as many chromosomes as the other cells in the organism.

Chromosomes

Chromosomes are made up of many genes joined together like beads on a string.
Although humans have only 23 pairs chromosomes, your body cells contain more than 60,000 genes. Each of the genes controls a particular trait.