Gregory Mendel, the monk of Moravia, was really “decades ahead of his time and really deserves the title of“ founder of genetics. ”Thus concludes an international team of scientists as Mendel’s 200th birthday approaches. July.
The team, from KeyGene in the Netherlands and the John Innes Center in the UK, builds on recently discovered historical information to conclude that when their proposals are considered in light of what was known about the cells in the middle of the 19th century, Mendel was decades ahead of its time.
Discovering hidden details about Mendel has helped build an image of the scientific and intellectual environment in which he worked. At first Mendel knew nothing about Genetics and had to deduce it all for himself. How he did this is very instructive. “
Dr. Noel Ellis of the John Innes Center, one of the collaborators of the study
The new information shows that Mendel began his work with the practical goals of a plant breeder, before he became interested in the underlying biological processes that condition hereditary differences between organisms. It also shows that Mendel recognized the importance of understanding the formation of reproductive cells and the process of fertilization.
A small but rich heritage
Mendel’s work and ideas have been studied by many, although the material describing his work is limited. Where Darwin left thousands of letters, only a few are known to Mendel.
Mendel’s work began to receive significant recognition 34 years after its publication and 16 years after his death. No notes related to this work were found. Only a couple of scientific papers remained, one of which is the famous ‘Experiments on Plant Hybrids’ published in German in 1866. This article remains the basis of what school children learn about current genetics.
Newspaper articles from Mendel’s time have been digitized
Thanks to modern technology, the authors were able to extract valuable information from recently digitized 19th-century newspaper articles, events, and yearbooks. These show how advanced Mendel’s ideas and work were, as he used cell biological theory to draw conclusions about how the traits of parents’ plants are transmitted to their offspring.
Mendel’s element: what we know as genes
Mendel pointed out that pea plants have to maintain and transmit the “code” for the appearance of a trait, now we call genes coding instructions, Mendel called them “Element”.
For many traits, there are two different Elements or “Elements”, for example to code the color of the pea flower, one that conditions the color purple and an alternative to the color of the white flower.
Mendel proposed that in the male and female parts of the flower reproductive cells are formed that contain only one type of element, and these unique elements are transmitted to a daughter plant, one of the male and another of the female.
We now know that only half the number of chromosomes is transmitted to egg cells in parts of the female flower and pollen to parts of the male flower, thanks to the division that occurs during meiosis. in the formation of gametes.
Two centuries after its birth, this extraordinary scientific life still offers new ideas.
Source:
Magazine reference:
van Dijk, PJ, et al. (2022) How did Mendel come to his discoveries ?. Genetics of nature. doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01109-9.