By Tamanna Balachandran
Once upon a time, there was the willow leaf mandarin (citrus deliciosa) and the sweet orange (citrus sinensis). In the 19th century, the mandarin and the orange were crossed to create the clementine. Clementines do not exist in the wild. They are entirely the fruit of human ingenuity. Being easier to peel and deliciously sweet, these hybrids won over our taste buds and eating habits.
Hybridization is the process of interbreeding between individuals of different species (interspecific hybridization) or genetically divergent individuals from the same species (intraspecific hybridization). Let’s take a look at a story about early hybridization.
In the 1500s, the age of Renaissance created a sense of exploration in humankind. Kings and commoners, scholars and seamen, all seeked to find new routes to new lands. Europeans sent out ships across the world and explorers returned with all sorts of strange new plants and animals. People began cultivating them, breeding them and got very interested in breeding experiments of all these exciting novel species. Apart from an interest in these hands-on science experiments, another reason people cared about breeding was the power of Economics. At this time, Europe was building road networks and creating commerce across villages, cities and countries. The growing trade made it more economically viable and rewarding to have the best produce, and genetic engineering made this possible.
In England, a man named Blakewell became very famous as a breeder after producing the Dishley sheep which have great meat. However, in Europe, sheep are needed for wool not meat. Now, it was a well-known fact that Spanish sheep had the best wool but these sheep couldn’t survive in European climates. The obvious conclusion would be that the perfect sheep was a mix of the Dishley and the Spanish sheep.
So ensued sheep breeding experiments from France to Germany. Among all these places, the one that cared most about wool, you might imagine, was the heart of the textile industry, Moravia in the Habsburg Empire. The capital of Moravia, Brno, began to organise scientific societies and discussion groups to figure out how they could make breeding better, more scientific. In 1806, a man named Carl Andre, organized the ‘Moravian Society for the Improvement of Agriculture, Natural Science, and the Knowledge of the Country’. He writes in one of his programs that one day the world will be as grateful to some son of Brno as they are to Copernicus and Newton. Five years later, a man named Hempel tries to characterize the laws of hybridisation and how they really work. In 1820, he writes, “we’re going to need a researcher with a profound knowledge of botany and sharply defined powers of observation who might with untiring and stubborn patience grasp the subtleties of the experiments, take a firm command with them and provide a clear explanation.”
Carl Andre passes away leaving a group called ‘The Enological and Pomological Society’ in the hands of a plant-breeding enthusiast, CF Napp. Now plant-breeding is just an interest of CF Napp, the equivalent of joining his school’s science club. His full time job is being the Abbot of the Augustinian Monastery in Brno. He decides to have his monastery working on breeding. So he goes around looking for MIT worthy monks, and who does he find?
Mendel.
Mendel is no accident. Mendel is the result of economic forces and scientific forces, and civic planning and an understanding of scientific research that all culminates in this monk. You may think Mendel discovered the laws of genetics accidentally, understanding the conditions of hybridisation while cooking peas for his fellow monks.
No.
Mendel is the product of a biotech incubator.
Mendel is an incredible scientist. He knew that to analyze the laws that governed heredity, he had to design a really careful experiment. The first thing he did that’s absolutely amazing is the most boring but necessary thing to do in science. He created the controls for his experiment; he knew that if he wanted to breed plants together he needed to know what would be the result if he hadn’t bred them together. He needed a particular plant, a plant that bred true. So he went to the market and returned with 34 varieties of peas. 34. He spent two years breeding them and noting down results. Two years of patient work just to decide which plant to use.
The genetic experiments Mendel did with pea plants took him eight years (1856-1863) and he published his results in 1865. During this time, Mendel grew over 10,000 pea plants, keeping track of progeny number and type. Mendel’s work and his Laws of Inheritance were not appreciated in his time. It wasn’t until 1900, after the rediscovery of his Laws, that his experimental results were understood.
And that’s the story of the Father of Genetics, Gregor Mendel.
Bibliography:
Prof. Eric Lander’s MIT Undergrad Lectures of ‘Introduction to Biology’
Comments