The Hunt for Genetic Material

 Since, the dawn of the civilization man has realized that there are something hidden in sexual reproduction that do decide the type, structure, gesture, etc. of the newborn as a result of sexual reproduction. And that knowledge was exploited enormously in a primitive type of animal and plant husbandry in search of efficient way of fulfilling their needs.

With the invention of agriculture and domestication of wild animals at around 9000-11000 years ago, man launched their first ever breeding programme knowingly or unknowingly. But it was quite sure that they were quite unaware of a deep internal structure responsible for that. They were totally unaware of presence of the very fundamental structure of their breeding programme called gene or factor (as per G. J. Mendel).

But there was one thing common that they all noticed – 1.Heredity & 2.variation

Heredity came as like the similarities between the newborn and the parents. And variation came as the difference between the newborn and the parent.

Those two phenomenon did caught the eyes of philosophers and scientists in their time. And this thing was eye catching as each normal human look the same as all human do, walking upright using two legs (lower limbs), talking fluently, have opposite thumb, creative and etc. but at the same time they are all different they are either male or female, some taller than others, some look blonde and other dark, etc. But, after all these they are all human.

And this concept of heredity and variation is modified over the time satisfying the needs of scientists in completing their theory, some failed and some stayed super successful. “The theory of evolution” by Charles Darwin is notable among the success stories.

But those theories are unrelated to the question of what causes the variation?

Some theories like “Particulate theory” by Manpertius by the end of 17^th century and “Pangenesis theory” by Darwin (1868)  and others collectively called “Theories of blending inheritance”, tried to answer the question above but failed and the question remained unanswered till the advent of G. J. Mendel on the scene.

It is worth mentioning here that, before Mendel and also before Darwin and Manpertius, a German Botanist Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter, who worked on it (1760) and obtained experimental evidence that inherited traits tended to remain constant and characterized the basic features of inheritance but was unable to answer the question.

Then comes the Gregor Johan Mendel. He worked with 7 contrasting characters of garden pea (Pisum sativum) across generations, and for the very first time he incorporated statistics and probability

reasoning in biological studies during a time period of 7 years (1856-1863). And published his work in 1866 in the ‘Annual Proceeding of Natural History of Brunn’. But, unfortunately he died unrecognized in 1884 due to some unknown cause which might have been like his ideas were ahead of his time or unacceptance of mathematics with biology at that time or unawareness of intellectuals about cytological basis of inheritance or his publication or just negligence.

But that’s not the point of exit for Mendel from the scene. 16 years after he died, his work was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Erich Tschermak Seysenegg and Carl Correns in the year 1900. And they celebrated the ‘Happy new century’ by publishing Mendel’s work on ‘Flora’ in

1901. And that is when they found that the long awaited question have already been answered by Mendel in a 6 letter word –‘Factor’.

 While Mendel’s work was dormant, biology especially cytology and study of cellular division have had a significant advancement due to advent of technology and better understanding of nature.

In that time of dormancy, the world outside was preparing its soil to support the seed that Mendel once planted. In that time several stains were identifies that made study of a cell and its mechanism a bit easier with the help of freshly modified telescopes that became able to study structures at 2500x with great resolution. It was the time pre-discovered cell division was getting understand with much more detail than ever. With Walther Flemming

came the term “chromatin” simply derived from ‘chroma’ (Greek word for colour). Walther Flemming established chromatin movement during mitosis, and later joined by establishment of chromatin movement during meiosis by Boveri and others.

With those advancements and establishments Mendel’s work was ready to be accepted. And it happened. Now, the world knows Mendel’s ‘factors’ as Wilhelm Johannsen’s proposed term to describe Mendelian unit of heredity- “Gene” (1909).

After evaluating (1900s) Mendel’s works and laws, W.Bateson found it to be universal, then honoring the creator of these laws, this set of laws is named as “Mendel’s laws of heredity”. At the same time Bateson felt a need of naming for the study of heredity and inherited variations, and coined the term “Genetics” and assigned Mendel as its father- the “Father of Genetics”.

Mendel is done. At this point of time another question arose – What is this ‘factor’ or ‘gene’??

Now another chapter in genetics began. With the mystery of what causes heredity solved the mystery of what is that which cause heredity came along.

The hunt for gene began.

                                    To be continued.....