Beautiful Piles of Bones: An Interview with 2017 Genetics Society of America Medal Recipient David M. Kingsley

The Genetics Society of America Medal is awarded to an individual for outstanding contributions to the field of genetics in the last 15 years. Recipients of the GSA Medal are recognized for elegant and highly meaningful contributions to modern genetics, exemplifying the ingenuity of GSA membership. The 2017 recipient is David M. Kingsley, whose work in mouse, sticklebacks, and humans has shifted paradigms about how vertebrates evolve. Kingsley first fell in love with genetics in graduate school, where he worked on receptor mediated endocytosis with Monty Krieger. In his postdoctoral training he was able to unite genetics with his first scientific love: vertebrate morphology. He joined the group of Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins, where he led efforts to map the classical mouse skeletal mutation short ear Convinced that experimental genetics had a unique power to reveal the inner workings of evolution, Kingsley then established the stickleback fish as an extraordinarily productive model of quantitative trait evolution in wild species. He and his colleagues revealed many important insights, including the discoveries that major morphological differences can map to key loci with large effects, that regulatory changes in essential developmental control genes have produced advantageous new traits, and that nature has selected the same genes over and over again to drive the stickleback's skeletal evolution. Recently, Kingsley's group has been using these lessons to reveal more about how our own species evolved.This is an abridged version of the interview. The full interview is available on the Genes to Genomes blog, at genestogenomes.org/kingsley/.

Frontiers of Knowledge: An Interview with 2017 Edward Novitski Prize Recipient Jonathan Hodgkin

The Genetics Society of America's Edward Novitski Prize recognizes a single experimental accomplishment or a body of work in which an exceptional level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity has been used to design and execute scientific experiments to solve a difficult problem in genetics. The 2017 winner, Jonathan Hodgkin, used elegant genetic studies to unravel the sex determination pathway in Caenorhabditis elegans He inferred the order of genes in the pathway and their modes of regulation using epistasis analyses-a powerful tool that was quickly adopted by other researchers. He expanded the number and use of informational suppressor mutants in C. elegans that are able to act on many genes. He also introduced the use of collections of wild C. elegans to study naturally occurring genetic variation, paving the way for SNP mapping and QTL analysis, as well as studies of hybrid incompatibilities between worm species. His current work focuses on nematode-bacterial interactions and innate immunity.

Inside the Literature: An Interview with Sally G. Hoskins, 2017 Recipient of the Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education

The Genetics Society of America's Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education recognizes significant and sustained impact on genetics education. The 2017 recipient is Sally G. Hoskins, in recognition of her role in developing and promoting the transformative science education method CREATE (Consider, Read, Elucidate hypotheses, Analyze and interpret data, and Think of the next Experiment). This innovative approach uses primary literature to engage students, allowing them to experience for themselves the creativity and challenge of study design, analysis, interpretation, collaboration, and debate. Comprehensive evaluation of CREATE has consistently found that students improve in difficult-to-teach skills like critical thinking and experimental design, while showing improved attitudes and beliefs about science.This is an abridged version of the interview. The full interview is available on the Genes to Genomes blog, at genestogenomes.org/hoskins/.

A Chemical Reaction to the Historiography of Biology

This article examines the often-overlooked role of chemical ideas and practices in the history of modern biology. The first section analyses how the conventional histories of the life sciences have, through the twentieth century, come to focus nearly exclusively on evolutionary theory and genetics, and why this storyline is inadequate. The second section elaborates on what the restricted neo-Darwinian history of biology misses, noting a variety of episodes in the history of biology that relied on developments in - or tools from - chemistry, including an example from the author's own work. The diverse ways in which biologists have used chemical approaches often relate to the concrete, infrastructural side of research; a more inclusive history thus also connects to a historiography of materials and objects in science.

Hierarchy, determinism, and specificity in theories of development and evolution

The concepts of hierarchical organization, genetic determinism and biological specificity (for example of species, biologically relevant macromolecules, or genes) have played a crucial role in biology as a modern experimental science since its beginnings in the nineteenth century. The idea of genetic information (specificity) and genetic determination was at the basis of molecular biology that developed in the 1940s with macromolecules, viruses and prokaryotes as major objects of research often labelled "reductionist". However, the concepts have been marginalized or rejected in some of the research that in the late 1960s began to focus additionally on the molecularization of complex biological structures and functions using systems approaches. This paper challenges the view that 'molecular reductionism' has been successfully replaced by holism and a focus on the collective behaviour of cellular entities. It argues instead that there are more fertile replacements for molecular 'reductionism', in which genomics, embryology, biochemistry, and computer science intertwine and result in research that is as exact and causally predictive as earlier molecular biology.

Mendelism: New Insights from Gregor Mendel's Lectures in Brno

Interpretation of Gregor Mendel's work has previously been based on study of his published paper "Experiments in Plant Hybridization." In contrast, the lectures that he gave preceding publication of this work have been largely neglected for more than 150 years. Here, we report on and interpret the content of Mendel's previous two lectures, as they were reported in a local newspaper. We comprehensively reference both the text of his paper and the historical background of his experiments. Our analysis shows that while Mendel had inherited the traditional research program on interspecific hybridization in plants, he introduced the novel method of ratio analysis for representing the variation of unit-characters among offspring of hybrids. His aim was to characterize and explain the developmental features of the distributional pattern of unit-characters in two series of hybrid experiments, using self-crosses and backcrosses with parents. In doing so, he not only answered the question of what the unit-characters were and the nature of their hierarchical classification, but also successfully inferred the numerical principle of unit-character transmission from generation to generation. He also established the nature of the composition and behaviors of reproductive cells from one generation to the next. Here we highlight the evidence from Mendel's lectures, clearly announcing that he had discovered the general law of cross-generation transmission of unit-characters through reproductive cells containing unit-factors. The recovered content of these previous lectures more accurately describes the work he performed with his garden peas than his published paper and shows how he first presented it in Brno. It is thus an invaluable resource for understanding the origin of the science of genetics.

C.H. Waddington's differences with the creators of the modern evolutionary synthesis: a tale of two genes

In 2011, Peterson suggested that the main reason why C.H. Waddington was essentially ignored by the framers of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1950s was because they were Cartesian reductionists and mathematical population geneticists while he was a Whiteheadian organicist and experimental geneticist who worked with Drosophila. This paper suggests a further reason that can only be seen now. The former defined genes and their alleles by their selectable phenotypes, essentially the Mendelian view, while Waddington defined a gene through its functional role as determined by genetic analysis, a view that foresaw the modern view that a gene is a DNA sequence with some function. The former were interested in selection, while Waddington focused on variation. The differences between the two views of a gene are briefly considered in the context of systems biology.

Discipline building in Germany: women and genetics at the Berlin Institute for Heredity Research

The origin and the development of scientific disciplines has been a topic of reflection for several decades. The few extensive case studies support the thesis that scientific disciplines are not monolithic structures but can be characterized by distinct social, organizational and scientific-technical practices. Nonetheless, most disciplinary histories of genetics confine themselves largely to an uncontested account of the content of the discipline or occasionally institutional factors. Little attention is paid to the large number of researchers who, by their joint efforts, ultimately shaped the discipline. We contribute to this aspect of disciplinary historiography by discussing the role of women researchers at the Institute for Heredity Research, founded in 1914 in Berlin under the directorship of Erwin Baur, and the sister of the John Innes Institute at Cambridge. This paper investigates how and why Baur built a highly successful research programme that relied on the efforts of his female staff, whose careers, notably Elisabeth Schiemann's, are also assessed in toto. These women undertook the necessary 'technoscience' and in some cases innovative work and helped increase the prestige of the institute and its director. Together they played a pivotal role in the establishment of genetics in Germany. Without them the discipline would have developed much more slowly and along a divergent path.

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Nadine Dobrovolskaïa-Zavadskaïa, première femme russe à diriger un département de chirurgie en Russie, émigre en France en 1921. À son arrivée, elle entre à l'Institut du Radium à Paris pour mener des recherches visant à améliorer les protocoles de traitement du cancer. En 1927, Claudius Regaud lui confie l'étude de l'hérédité des cancers. Dans ce contexte, elle s'intéresse à la nature des mutations, et découvre et étudie une mutation de la souris appelée T (c'est à dire Tailless, ou brachyoure). Ce travail fait d'elle une pionnière dans le domaine de la génétique du développement, et son travail est encore cité actuellement. Plusieurs questions se posent concernant le cursus de cette chercheuse. Par quels moyens, a-t-elle pu intégrer, dès son arrivée en France, un laboratoire de recherche spécialisé dans une discipline qui lui était jusqu'alors inconnue ? Quelle a été la contribution des savants russes à la recherche française dans ce domaine ? Cet article décrit le parcours scientifique de Nadine Dobrovolskaïa en l'intégrant dans son contexte scientifique national et international. Le rôle primordial, mais très méconnu, joué par le réseau académique russe en France dans l'intégration des immigrants dans la vie universitaire, est ainsi mis en évidence.

The Evolving Definition of the Term "Gene"

This paper presents a history of the changing meanings of the term "gene," over more than a century, and a discussion of why this word, so crucial to genetics, needs redefinition today. In this account, the first two phases of 20th century genetics are designated the "classical" and the "neoclassical" periods, and the current molecular-genetic era the "modern period." While the first two stages generated increasing clarity about the nature of the gene, the present period features complexity and confusion. Initially, the term "gene" was coined to denote an abstract "unit of inheritance," to which no specific material attributes were assigned. As the classical and neoclassical periods unfolded, the term became more concrete, first as a dimensionless point on a chromosome, then as a linear segment within a chromosome, and finally as a linear segment in the DNA molecule that encodes a polypeptide chain. This last definition, from the early 1960s, remains the one employed today, but developments since the 1970s have undermined its generality. Indeed, they raise questions about both the utility of the concept of a basic "unit of inheritance" and the long implicit belief that genes are autonomous agents. Here, we review findings that have made the classic molecular definition obsolete and propose a new one based on contemporary knowledge.

Expectation and futurity: The remarkable success of genetic determinism

Genetic determinism is nowadays largely questioned and widely criticized. However, if we look at the history of biology in the last one hundred years, we realize that genetic determinism has always been controversial. Why, then, did it acquire such relevance in the past despite facing longstanding criticism? Through the analysis of some of the ambitious expectations of future scientific applications, this article explores the possibility that part of the historical success of genetic determinism lies in the powerful rhetorical strategies that have connected the germinal matter with alluring bio-technological visions. Indeed, in drawing on the recent perspectives of "expectation studies" in science and technology, it will be shown that there has been an interesting historical relationship between reductionist notions of the gene as a hereditary unit, coded information or functional DNA segment, and startling prophecies of what controlling such an entity might achieve. It will also be suggested that the well-known promissory nature of genomics is far older than the emergence of biotechnology in the 1970s. At least from the time of the bio-utopias predicted by J.B.S. Haldane and J. S. Huxley, the gene has often been surrounded by what I call the "rhetoric of futurity": a promissory rhetoric that, despite momentous changes in the life sciences throughout the 20th century, has remained relatively consistent over time.

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This survey paper contains a brief analysis of publications included in current issue of scientific journal «Cytology and Genetics» dedicated to its 50th anniversary. These papers reflect scientific achievements of their authors in the field of genetics and cell biology and underine the potential of these two biological disciplines, forming «double helix» of the journal.

Sewall Wright, shifting balance theory, and the hardening of the modern synthesis

The period between the 1940s and 1960s saw the hardening of the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology. Gould and Provine argue that Wright's shifting balance theory of evolution hardened during this period. But their account does not do justice to Wright, who always regarded selection as acting together with drift. This paper presents a more adequate account of the development of Wright's shifting balance theory, paying particular attention to his application of the theory to the geographical distribution of flower color dimorphism in Linanthus parryae. The account shows that even in the heyday of the hardened synthesis, the balance or interaction of evolutionary factors, such as drift, selection, and migration, occupied pride of place in Wright's theory, and that between the 1940s and 1970s, Wright developed the theory of isolation by distance to quantitatively represent the structure of the Linanthus population, which he argued had the kind of structure posited by his shifting balance theory. In the end, Wright arrived at a sophisticated description of the structure of the Linanthus population, where the interaction between drift and selection varied spatially.

Seeds of doubt: Mendel's choice of Hieracium to study inheritance, a case of right plant, wrong trait

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In this review, we explore Gregor Mendel's hybridization experiments with Hieracium , update current knowledge on apomictic reproduction and describe approaches now being used to develop true-breeding hybrid crops. From our perspective, it is easy to conclude that Gregor Mendel's work on pea was insightful, but his peers clearly did not regard it as being either very convincing or of much importance. One apparent criticism was that his findings only applied to pea. We know from a letter he wrote to Carl von Nägeli, a leading botanist, that he believed he needed to "verify, with other plants, the results obtained with Pisum". For this purpose, Mendel adopted Hieracium subgenus Pilosella, a phenotypically diverse taxon under botanical study at the time. What Mendel could not have known, however, is that the majority of these plants are not sexual plants like pea, but instead are facultatively apomictic. In these forms, the majority of seed arises asexually, and such progeny are, therefore, clones of the maternal parent. Mendel obtained very few hybrids in his Hieracium crosses, yet we calculate that he probably emasculated in excess of 5000 Hieracium florets to even obtain the numbers he did. Despite that effort, he was perplexed by the results, and they ultimately led him to conclude that "the hybrids of Hieracium show a behaviour exactly opposite to those of Pisum". Apomixis is now a topic of intense research interest, and in an ironic twist of history, Hieracium subgenus Pilosella has been developed as a molecular model to study this trait. In this paper, we explore further Mendel's hybridization experiments with Hieracium, update current knowledge on apomictic reproduction and describe approaches now being used to develop true-breeding hybrid crops.

From Mendel's discovery on pea to today's plant genetics and breeding : Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the reading of Mendel's discovery

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This work discusses several selected topics of plant genetics and breeding in relation to the 150th anniversary of the seminal work of Gregor Johann Mendel. In 2015, we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the presentation of the seminal work of Gregor Johann Mendel. While Darwin's theory of evolution was based on differential survival and differential reproductive success, Mendel's theory of heredity relies on equality and stability throughout all stages of the life cycle. Darwin's concepts were continuous variation and "soft" heredity; Mendel espoused discontinuous variation and "hard" heredity. Thus, the combination of Mendelian genetics with Darwin's theory of natural selection was the process that resulted in the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. Although biology, genetics, and genomics have been revolutionized in recent years, modern genetics will forever rely on simple principles founded on pea breeding using seven single gene characters. Purposeful use of mutants to study gene function is one of the essential tools of modern genetics. Today, over 100 plant species genomes have been sequenced. Mapping populations and their use in segregation of molecular markers and marker-trait association to map and isolate genes, were developed on the basis of Mendel's work. Genome-wide or genomic selection is a recent approach for the development of improved breeding lines. The analysis of complex traits has been enhanced by high-throughput phenotyping and developments in statistical and modeling methods for the analysis of phenotypic data. Introgression of novel alleles from landraces and wild relatives widens genetic diversity and improves traits; transgenic methodologies allow for the introduction of novel genes from diverse sources, and gene editing approaches offer possibilities to manipulate gene in a precise manner.

"Bringing Taxonomy to the Service of Genetics": Edgar Anderson and Introgressive Hybridization

In introgressive hybridization (the repeated backcrossing of hybrids with parental populations), Edgar Anderson found a source for variation upon which natural selection could work. In his 1953 review article "Introgressive Hybridization," he asserted that he was "bringing taxonomy to the service of genetics" whereas distinguished colleagues such as Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr did the precise opposite. His work as a geneticist particularly focused on linkage and recombination and was enriched by collaborations with Missouri Botanical Garden colleagues interested in taxonomy as well as with cytologists C.D. Darlington and Karl Sax. As the culmination of a biosystemtatic research program, Anderson's views challenged the mainstream of the Evolutionary Synthesis.

Garland Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and Development

Garland E. Allen's 1978 biography of the Nobel Prize winning biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan provides an excellent study of the man and his science. Allen presents Morgan as an opportunistic scientist who follows where his observations take him, leading him to his foundational work in Drosophila genetics. The book was rightfully hailed as an important achievement and it introduced generations of readers to Morgan. Yet, in hindsight, Allen's book largely misses an equally important part of Morgan's work - his study of development and regeneration. It is worth returning to this part of Morgan, exploring what Morgan contributed and also why he has been seen by contemporaries and historians such as Allen as having set aside some of the most important developmental problems. A closer look shows how Morgan's view of cells and development that was different from that of his most noted contemporaries led to interpretation of his important contributions in favor of genetics. This essay is part of a special issue, revisiting Garland Allen's views on the history of life sciences in the twentieth century.