Some possible bearings of genetics on pathology — John Shaqi
Some possible bearings of genetics on pathologyMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
Some possible bearings of genetics on pathology
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Diseases -- Causes and theories of causation; Genetics; Heredity; Pathology
Stockard’s results with guinea pigs, unlike those of Brown-Sequard, have
been done under carefully controlled conditions. He has guarded against
abnormalities in his stock by using pedigreed material. The malformations
that reappear in successive generations are general rather than specific.
Such organs as the eye are those hardest hit, but this is supposed
to be rather a by-product of the general debility of the individual.
Stockard points out that the alcohol has affected the germ cells, and it
is through these that the effects are transmitted. Now if one or more
genes had been permanently changed we should expect to have evidence of
Mendelian inheritance. The results do not show convincingly that the
inheritance is not Mendelian, but it does not appear to be so. There is
another possibility. Recent results have shown that rarely entire blocks
of genes—pieces of the chromosomes—may be duplicated (owing to imperfect
separation) or pieces may be lost. Here the effects on the organism are
more far-reaching than when a single gene is changed. It remains to be
discovered whether, in some such way as this, Stockard’s remarkable
results may be brought into line.
Guyer injected the crushed lens of rabbits into fowls. From the blood of
the fowl he obtained serum that was injected into pregnant rabbits. The
offspring of these rabbits whether male or female often had defective
eyes and lenses. The defect was even transmitted to later generations.
Here also the germ cells of the embryo may be changed by serum that at
the same time affects the development of the eyes of the embryo in utero.
If this is the case we should expect, as Guyer pointed out, that the germ
cells of the pregnant mother (into which the serum was injected) would
also show effects. It should have been a simple matter to show this by a
proper test. The test that Guyer made, namely by out-breeding the mother
and finding no defective F₁ young, was quite inadequate if, as appears to
be the case, the character is a recessive.
It is important to keep clearly in mind that there are two distinct
questions involved in these three cases. Genetics has to deal with only
one of them. There is first the question of the action of environment
on the germ cells. Genetics has nothing to do with this question. There
is then to be determined whether, if variations may be induced in
these ways, they fall into one or another of the Mendelian moulds. This
is for the geneticist to determine, but he finds himself in a curious
predicament, for it can not be claimed that any of these three cases have
been shown to give a direct Mendelian result—but neither can it be denied
that they may possibly come under the scheme, or some modification of it.
There we must leave the matter at present.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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