Developments in Biology

Genetics Comes to the Fore.

In the 1930s the study of genetics was the focus of both heavy activity and frustration. By then it had become clear that to investigate how genes mutated would require methods beyond those used in most experiments. Genetics as a field was subjected to two main schools of thought. One was German biologist August Weismann's study of germ plasm, which focused on the transmission of dominant and recessive traits. The other was Hugo de Vries's work on mutation, which sought to explain how genetic traits are altered. The studies conducted up to the 1930s led to an important question: how do fixed genes nonetheless produce species mutation? Furthermore, microscopy was not advanced enough to provide more information, since even large genes could not be observed. In Germany and Russia botanists and geneticists took steps to ensure the purity of the genes analyzed so as to ensure maximum certainty of the results...

[The entire page is 741 words long]

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