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Moldon Gene311 Essay Assignment 220901 204744

This document discusses the history of genetics from Gregor Mendel's work in 1865 coining the term "genetics" through developments in the early 20th century establishing chromosomal theory and the role of genes. It describes debates around the definition of a gene and how molecular biology discoveries in the mid-20th century complicated unambiguous definitions, with genes found to code for proteins but also involve regulatory elements. The role of epigenetics in gene expression is also noted, as well as how genetics remains relevant though integrated with molecular biology concepts.

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HANNAH MAIVE MOLDON
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118 views3 pages

Moldon Gene311 Essay Assignment 220901 204744

This document discusses the history of genetics from Gregor Mendel's work in 1865 coining the term "genetics" through developments in the early 20th century establishing chromosomal theory and the role of genes. It describes debates around the definition of a gene and how molecular biology discoveries in the mid-20th century complicated unambiguous definitions, with genes found to code for proteins but also involve regulatory elements. The role of epigenetics in gene expression is also noted, as well as how genetics remains relevant though integrated with molecular biology concepts.

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HANNAH MAIVE MOLDON
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Gayon (2016) has written an article entitled From Mendel to Epigenetics:

History of Genetics. It is said there that in Gregor Mendel's memoir on plant


hybridization in 1865 is where the word genetics was first used as a new
science concerning heredity. It is known by being the Science of Heredity, this
paved a new path to what is called Classical Genetics where the gene is
simultaneously a unit of function and tranmission as per Gayon's abstract. It
became a seriously confusing topic to where genetics originated whether it
was the year Mendel's book was publicated in 1866? Is it in the 1900's where
Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, Erich von Tschermak rediscovered Mendel's
Principle of Heredity? was it in 1906 to when Bateson published a book
entitled A Defence of Mendel's Principle of Heredity? This rediscovery further
blurred the ambiguous date of birth for genetics because who ever
rediscovered it did not plan for a new proposal of general laws of heredity
when Mendel's first law only talked about development of hybrids' in plants
and remained unknown until the 1900. Bateson defended that the Mendelian
Laws of Hybridization did not only apply to plants but also to animals, a result
of crossings between a huge number of individual hereditary differences
among all sexually reproducing organisms. Hugo de Vries also used
Pangenesis and Pangene in 1889 in a book titled Intracellular Pangenesis
where he supported the existence of hereditary particles in all the cells of an
organism, the word Pangene is derived from Darwin's Pangenesis though de
Vries rejected the Lamarckian part of Darwin's Hypothesis. In Johannsens'
book in 1909 he proposed the word genotype and phenotype, he was
reponsible for the term gene that was used until the emergence of the
molecular concept of the gene. Following Augustus Weisman, some leading
cytologists suggested that the behavior of chromosomes during meiosis was
important for the knowledge of variation and heredity.

In 1902, Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri proposed to consider the


chromosomes as the bearers of the Mendelian Factors. They thought that
during meiosis, the two successive cell divisions from a diploid cell to the four
haploid cells was the basis for Mendel's Laws of segregation and
reassortment. In the 1920s the chromosomal theory had begun and became
an essential part of genetics as it gave way for more material flavor to
genetics. In this new theoretical framework, genes had spatial significance
and had a precise location. By the time of the 20th century, the role of
international meetings on hybridization became the International Meetings of
Genetics. It became further institutionalized when chairs devoted to genetics
were created also the publication of textbooks exclusively devoted to genetics,
Vilmorin Company also sponsored and hosted the 4th International Meetings
of Genetics in 1911. This also means specialization, in the mid 1930s genetics
became subdivided to three major sub-disciplines namely: formal genetics
proper, population genetics, modern synthesis, and physiological genetics.
Beadle and Tatum's 1941 paper titled Genetic control of biochemical reaction
like the production of vitamin B6, they proposed that genes control or regulate
reactions in the system by acting as enzymes or determining the specifities of
enzymes. In approximately 50 years, a definition of gene has prevailed. A
gene is no more nor less than a DNA sequence that codes for the amino-acid
sequence of a protein (or generally a polypeptide) thought it had to be
softened should the word "gene" be restricted to the coding sequence of a
structural gene, the DNA determining the RNA sequence. In 1960s it was
known by Jacob and Monod discovered the case of the lactose operon, that
some of these entities overlap. These findings showed that it was difficult to
provide a non-ambiguous and general molecular definition of the gene. The
invention of recombining DNA (called genetic engineering) in the late 1970s
led to impressive list of discoveries, which have rendered the hope of finding
non-ambiguous molecular definition of the word 'gene' it led to the discovery of
split gene found in eukaryotes and viruses.

Genetics is not only a concern for molecular biologists, but also for a certain
number of disciplines where the concept of the gene and other related
traditional genetic concepts remain important in many
aspects of our daily lives, in our evolution, ecology, medical would be
handicapped if they were deprived with the concept of genetics/gene.
Epigenetics refers to studying modifications that directly affect the expression
of genes, but are not reducible to changes in the DNA sequence (e.g.
methylation of nucletides). The findings of molecular biology have deeply
altered the theoretical framework of genetics. Some say genetics have been
replaced by many concepts and methods of molecular biology which is not
only confined to study heredity/inheritance. Ambiguities around the concept of
'gene' 'allele' are no more than traces of a past. Theoretical framework does
not totally replace another but it overlaps the previou one, classical mechanics
still remains useful tool for explaining, predicting, and acting for a huge
number of phenomena in physics. It still remains an indespensible part of
science that keeps humanity from going forward and functioning to
accomodate the changing times. Genetics and the concept of gene's
relevance is a matter of scientific context.

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