History of genetics

Karaszi's paper explores the foundational principles of Mendelian genetics through experiments on pea plants and contrasts these findings with insights from paleontology. Using Mendel’s laws of segregation and independent assortment, the study highlights how traits are inherited across generations, specifically in the context of cellular respiration observed in germinating and non-germinating pea seeds. The study demonstrates that genetic inheritance governs biological processes such as metabolic activity, evidenced by increased carbon dioxide production in germinating seeds. Additionally, the paper contextualizes these findings within paleontology, contrasting short-term genetic inheritance with the long-term evolutionary changes observed in the fossil record. This interdisciplinary approach underscores the role of genetics in individual trait inheritance and paleontology’s focus on adaptive traits across geological timescales, providing a comprehensive view of life’s continuity and evolution.

Rapid developments and methodological divides hinder the study of how scientific knowledge accumulates, consolidates and transfers to the public sphere. Our work proposes using Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as a historiographical source for contemporary science. We chose the high-profile field of gene editing as our test case, performing a historical analysis of the English-language Wikipedia articles on CRISPR. Using a mixed-method approach, we qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed the CRISPR article's text, sections and references, alongside 50 affiliated articles. These, we found, documented the CRISPR field's maturation from a fundamental scientific discovery to a biotechnological revolution with vast social and cultural implications. We developed automated tools to support such research and demonstrated its applicability to two other scientific fields-coronavirus and circadian clocks. Our method utilizes Wikipedia as a digital and free archive, showing it can document the incremental growth of knowledge and the manner scientific research accumulates and translates into public discourse. Using Wikipedia in this manner compliments and overcomes some issues with contemporary histories and can also augment existing bibliometric research.

납자루 Acheilognathus lanceolatus의 유전 변이와 집단 구조를 알아보기 한국의 5개 집단(한강과 금강, 동진강, 섬진강, 낙동강)과 일본의 1개 집단(Katsura River)을 대상으로 AFLP 분석을 수행하였다. 5개의 선택적 프라이머 조합에 의해 검출된 집단별 유효 밴드의 수는 345~374개였으며, 다형성 밴드 수는 55 (15.0%)~131 (24.9%)개였다. 평균 유전적 다양성은 낙동강 집단이 가장 높은 값을 보였고 한강 집단이 가장 낮은 값을 보였다. 계통도 상에서 각 수계별로 채집된 개체는 각 집단별로 함께 분기하였으며, 이들은 높은 bootstrap 값으로 지지되는 2개의 단계통군 또는 집단 그룹으로 나누어졌다. 한편 유전적 분화도(FST)는 모든 집단 간에 유의적 차이를 보였다(P<0.01). 집단 그룹 간의 유전적변이 수준을 알아보기 위해 AMOVA 분석을 실시한 결과총 25.49%의 변이(P<0.01)을 보여 이들 집단 그룹은 유전적으로 명확히 구분되었다.

Based on a statistical analysis of his experiments, which was a novelty for the tradition of "horticulturalists" (or "plant breeders") as well as for the tradition of "hybridists", and seeking a "generally applicable law governing the formation and development of hybrids" (MENDEL 1865: 3), Mendel states "the law of development/evolution found for Pisum" (MENDEL 1865: 32). When he tries to provide the "foundation and explanation" (MENDEL 1865: 32) of the law of formation and development of hybrids, he does it in terms of the production and behavior of egg cells and pollen cells, and, ultimately, in terms of the nature and behavior of what he calls "elements" (MENDEL 1865: 41) or “cell elements” (MENDEL 1865: 42). Moreover, Mendel recognizes the existence not just of hybrids that behave like those of Pisum – i.e., of “variable hybrids” – but also of hybrids that “remain perfectly like the hybrid and continue constant in their offspring” (MENDEL 1865: 38) and “acquire the status of new species” (MENDEL 1865: 40) – i.e., of “constant hybrids” (MENDEL 1869: 27–28, 31). The law that would govern the behavior of constant hybrids would also find its foundation and explanation in terms of the nature and behavior of elements (or cell elements). Mendel’s hybridism consists of two theories: a theory that moves on a more “empirical” level, according to Schleiden’s first “special guiding maxim”, the “Maxim of the history of development/evolution” (SCHLEIDEN 1849: 141, 142, 146), which can be called “Mendel’s theory of the development/evolution of hybrids” (DEH), and a theory that moves on a more “theoretical” level, according to Schleiden’s second “special guiding maxim”, the “Maxim of the autonomy of cells in plants” (SCHLEIDEN 1849: 146, 148), which can be called “Mendel’s theory of the cellular foundation of the development/evolution of hybrids” (CFH).
The paper aims to present an analysis of these two theories and their intertheoretical relationships, carried out within the framework of the so-called Metatheoretical Structuralism (BALZER, MOULINES & SNEED 1987).

In 1904, Ellen Richards introduced "euthenics." By 1912, Lewellys Barker, director of medicine and physician-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, would tell the New York Times that the "task of eugenics" and the "task of euthenics" was the "Task for the Nation." Alongside the emergence of hereditarian eugenics, where fate was firmly rooted in heredity, this article places euthenics into the same Progressive Era demands for the scientific management over environmental issues like life and labor, health and hygiene, sewage and sanitation. I argue that euthenics not only heralded women as leaders in the quest for what Richards and eugenicists termed "racial improvement," but also aimed to make reforms through environmental and educational changes rather than hereditary interventions. Seeking to recuperate the figure of Ellen Richards in the history of science, I place Richards and her euthenics more into the debate over eugenics rather than over the emergence of home economics. Building on the work of Donald Opitz, Staffan Bergwik, and Brigette Van Tiggelen, this article shows, first, how Richards' career threads the needle between the home and the laboratory as sites of science making, not as separate spheres but as overlapping realms, and helps recover how domestic concerns shaped the focus of the life sciences. Second, this article shows how euthenics shaped eugenics by looking at the writings of American eugenicists Charles Davenport, Paul Popenoe, and David Starr Jordan. Third, the article describes how euthenics took root in new academic departments of domestic science, home economics, and departments child welfare and family life in the 1920 and 1930s, most notably the department of euthenics at the Kansas State Agricultural College from 1926 and the Institute of Euthenics at Vassar College after 1923.

Aborda o contexto de criação do Museu da Genética, em 2011 no Departamento de Genética na Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, em Porto Alegre, e apresenta sua estrutura e conteúdo. Argumenta-se que os materiais disponibilizados no Museu da Genética constituem uma rica fonte para pesquisas sobre a história da genética no Brasil (e da genética de populações humanas em particular) a partir da segunda metade do século XX, tema ainda pouco investigado, apesar da proeminência dessa área do conhecimento no Brasil.

O movimento eugenista nasceu no final do século XIX, na Inglaterra, tendo como principal protagonista Francis Galton (1822-1911); ao Brasil, chegou na passagem do século XIX para o XX, mas ganhou capilaridade a partir do protagonismo de Renato Kehl (1889-1974). Os partidários da eugenia acreditavam na sua efetivação para eliminar os grupos que apresentavam comportamentos anormais, por meio de políticas de controle de natalidade, criação de espaços de segregação, eliminação física e outros métodos. O presente artigo tem como finalidade discorrer sobre os fatores que, de acordo com a história da eugenia, propiciaram o seu nascimento na Europa e EUA. No Brasil, buscar-se-á demonstrar que embora a eugenia tenha tido receptividade por parte dos intelectuais, médicos e aqueles alinhados com os preceitos eugênicos, constata-se que ela foi um mecanismo fundamental para objetivar a segregação, a miscigenação e a eliminação dos negros/as no interior da sociedade brasileira. Tais ações foram r...

SummaryThe rich linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity of Ethiopia provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand the level to which cultural factors correlate with -- and shape -- genetic structure in human populations. Using primarily novel genetic variation data covering 1,268 Ethiopians representing 68 different ethnic groups, together with information on individuals’ birthplaces, linguistic/religious practices and 31 cultural practices, we disentangle the effects of geographic distance, elevation, and social factors upon shaping the genetic structure of Ethiopians today. We provide examples of how social behaviours have directly -- and strongly -- increased genetic differences among present-day peoples. We also show the fluidity of intermixing across linguistic and religious groups. We identify correlations between cultural and genetic patterns that likely indicate a degree of social selection involving recent intermixing among individuals that have certain practices in...

An interview by the editor and a member of the scientific board of História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos with Warwick Anderson, a leading historian of science and race from Australia. He talks about his training, positions he held at US universities, his publications, and his research at the University of Sydney. He discusses his current concern with the circulation of racial knowledge and biological materials as well as with the construction of networks of racial studies in the global south during the twentieth century. He also challenges the traditional historiography of science, which conventionally has been told from a Eurocentric perspective.

An article about the presence of Gypsies in Meinerzhagen, a small town in southern Westphalia in the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly based on archival sources.     
Published under: https://gypsy-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/resources-benninghaus-meinerzhagen.pdf

SummaryThe rich linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity of Ethiopia provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand the level to which cultural factors correlate with -- and shape -- genetic structure in human populations. Using primarily novel genetic variation data covering 1,268 Ethiopians representing 68 different ethnic groups, together with information on individuals’ birthplaces, linguistic/religious practices and 31 cultural practices, we disentangle the effects of geographic distance, elevation, and social factors upon shaping the genetic structure of Ethiopians today. We provide examples of how social behaviours have directly -- and strongly -- increased genetic differences among present-day peoples. We also show the fluidity of intermixing across linguistic and religious groups. We identify correlations between cultural and genetic patterns that likely indicate a degree of social selection involving recent intermixing among individuals that have certain practices in...

Mendel’s impact on science is overwhelming. Although based on the number of scientific papers he published he might be considered a meteorologist, his most significant contribution is his study of plant hybrids. This single work puts Mendel on a par with Darwin’s evolutionary theory and establishes him firmly in the frame of today’s biology. The aim of this article is to introduce the personality of Gregor Johann Mendel, focussing not just on his scientific work, but also on his background and what or who influenced him. To understand Mendel’s use of quantification and mathematical analysis of obtained results, representing a radical departure from methods of his predecessors, it is important to know something about their arguments, beliefs, and practices. He designed his experiments to answer a long standing question of hybridization, not inheritance as we perceive it today, since the science of genetics was born considerably later. He studied many genera of plants, but his famous ...

Um estudante entra em um túnel do tempo e se encontra com Gregor Mendel, no Mosteiro de Brünn, em 1864. Após o mútuo estranhamento, Mendel conversa com o jovem sobre ciência e lhe mostra as etapas de seu trabalho científico com as ervilhas-de-cheiro, Pisum sativum. Quando do retorno ao presente, o jovem volta como um híbrido, portando os óculos, o anel, a roupa e parte da personalidade e do conhecimento de Mendel. Entre a representação e a possível realidade, eis um fi lme sobre a vida e a obra de Gregor Mendel, o pai da Genética. Este filme faz parte do Programa “Quem foi que disse” desenvolvido na Universidade Federal Fluminense, dirigido por Luiz Andrade.

Esta pesquisa faz um estudo sobre a palavra gibi, através do método histórico, investigando as mudanças de seu significado e sua assimilação sociocultural. Considera-se que esse gênero artístico e fonte de informação para desenvolvimento de coleções especiais prescinde de estudos críticos sobre abordagens teóricas, lexicais e historiográficas para melhor compreensão desses materiais para o desenvolvimento de coleções. Nesta investigação, os primeiros registros foram encontrados em jornais de 1888, pesquisados na Hemeroteca Virtual da Fundação Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil. Constatou-se que inicialmente gibi era um apelido atribuído a pessoas negras. Posteriormente, transformou-se em uma gíria racista direcionada aos meninos negros, possuindo o sentido pejorativo de feio e grotesco, publicados em anúncios e em páginas de quadrinhos de periódicos. Depois a palavra passou a ser usada para designar os meninos negros que vendiam jornais nas ruas. Desses pequenos vendedores surgiu a inspiração para o título da revista Gibi, lançada em 1939 pela editora O Globo. O sucesso de vendas da revista, a ampla publicidade, o investimento em relações públicas e o cenário de críticas aos quadrinhos vindas principalmente de adversários da editora transformaram a palavra gibi em sinônimo de revista de histórias em quadrinhos no Brasil, fazendo o sentido original cair em desuso. A popularização do termo inspirou as bibliotecas brasileiras a adotarem a denominação de gibiteca para seus acervos de quadrinhos.

We speak of cutting-edge biotechnologies in the same terms we speak of word processing. For example, CRISPR, a genomic 'editing' tool, 'cuts' and 'pastes' bits of errant DNA. 1 Heredity, according to this way of talking, is a mutable text. This seems so natural because DNA, at least since the discovery of its structure and function, has been called a code, a code that is 'read', 'transcribed' and 'translated'. 2 So ubiquitous is this way of talking that it is difficult, at least for the layperson, to resist the assumption that genetic processes are, in some sense, textual. Only scare quotes around terms like 'read' raise a cautionary sign. On closer inspection, however, the fact that 'the central biological problem of DNA-based protein synthesis come to be metaphorically represented as an information code and a writing technologyand consequently a 'book of life'-is surprising, even perplexing, historian of science Lily E. Kay argues. 3 According to Kay, it was not representational or technical accuracy that impelled the adoption of scriptural and information-theoretic metaphors during the golden age of genomic discovery (1953-70). If not for epistemic reasons, however, why would scientists adopt the metaphor? What did it mean for the group of scientists from disparate fields who worked to 'crack' the genetic code and what should we make of it today? Kay poses and seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing the self-understandings and motivations of the central actors involved-a transdisciplinary alliance of scientists and researchers spanning North America and Europe and

The prehistory of the people of Uruguay is greatly complicated by the dramatic and severe effects of European contact, as with most of the Americas. After the series of military campaigns that exterminated the last remnants of nomadic peoples, Uruguayan official history masked and diluted the former indigenous ethnic diversity into the narrative of a singular people that all but died out. Here we present the first whole genome sequences of the Indigenous people of the region before the arrival of Europeans, from an archaeological site in eastern Uruguay that dates from 2,000 years before present. We find a surprising connection to ancient individuals from Panama and eastern Brazil, but not to modern Amazonians. This result may be indicative of a distinct migration route into South America that may have occurred along the Atlantic coast. We also find a distinct ancestry previously undetected in South America. Though this work begins to piece together some of the demographic nuance of...

The fifth article in a series dedicated to the restoration and museification of the Darovoe-Monogarovo-Cheremoshnya memorial space. The renewed F.M. Dostoevsky’s Estate Museum “Darovoe” opened in November 2021. The results of the restoration and the perspectives of its development were discussed at a round table on August 27, 2022, during the conference “9th Summer Readings in Darovoe.” Here is an abridged transcript of the discussion. The conflict between scholars and restorers described in the previous article led to a dialogue between the academic and museum communities; creative entrepreneurs have also joined the discussion. Both painful points and “points of growth” in the new life of the Museum-Estate “Darovoе” are highlighted.

The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood due to a lack of ancient DNA data and sparse sampling of present-day people. We report genome-wide data from 191 individuals from Mongolia, northern China, Taiwan, the Amur River Basin and Japan dating to 6000 BCE – 1000 CE, many from contexts never previously analyzed with ancient DNA. We also report 383 present-day individuals from 46 groups mostly from the Tibetan Plateau and southern China. We document how 6000-3600 BCE people of Mongolia and the Amur River Basin were from populations that expanded over Northeast Asia, likely dispersing the ancestors of Mongolic and Tungusic languages. In a time transect of 89 Mongolians, we reveal how Yamnaya steppe pastoralist spread from the west by 3300-2900 BCE in association with the Afanasievo culture, although we also document a boy buried in an Afanasievo barrow with ancestry entirely from local Mongolian hunter-gatherers, representing a unique case of someone of entirel...

Gregor Mendel, padre de la genética, fracasó en su intento por obtener la licenciatura que lo acreditara como profesor, pero su fracaso fue el origen de su posterior triunfo histórico. La fidelidad de Mendel hacia la defensa del preformismo fue la base de los experimentos en Pisum sativum. Su historia demuestra que la licencia no necesariamente certifica al verdadero maestro y que el buen maestro no requiere de licencia.

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar a persistência da eugenia após o final da Segunda Guerra. Tendo como objeto o periódico Mankind Quarterly, fundado em 1960 nos Estados Unidos, buscaremos demonstrar como um tipo específico de projeto eugênico, centrado na ideia de raça, se propagou dentro da extrema- direita a partir da rede internacional, a qual contava com participantes de diversos continentes e apoiando inúmeras
ideias, que incluíam supremacia branca, antissemitismo, anticomunismo,
neonazismo e neofascismo. Também procuraremos abordar como tais questões contribuem para demonstrar a continuidade da eugenia e do conceito de raça no pós-segunda guerra, contrariando a linha que durante muito tempo foi predominante dentro da historiografia sobre esses dois temas.

Este texto e parte da pesquisa concluida que explora alguns dos pressupostos da puericultura como prescricao curricular para a Escola Maternal da Sociedade de Socorro aos Necessitados (SSN), criada em Curitiba em 1928. Entre tantas atividades previstas pelos idealizadores daquela instituicao de assistencia a infância, a Escola Maternal se caracterizou pela preocupacao em oferecer a escolarizacao a infância ali assistida, cobrindo as idades de 0 a 12 anos, em tres fases distintas: a creche, o jardim de infância e o curso domestico. Nela a puericultura, a moral e o trabalho ganhavam relevo, e apresentavam-se como eixos de fundamental importância para a concretizacao do “objetivo maximo da Escola Maternal: higiene, ordem e disciplina”. Entendidas essas tres dimensoes da formacao como intrinsecamente ligadas a educacao do corpo e das sensibilidades, consideramos que o espargir da puericultura, da moral e do trabalho foi realizado com base na desqualificacao da maior parte da populacao n...

RESUMO Este artigo analisa a trajetória do intelectual educador e jornalista Raul Rodrigues Gomes (Piraquara, 1889 – Curitiba, 1975), relacionando-a ao movimento que culminou, em 1932, com o Manifesto pela Educação Nova, do qual foi signatário. Recorrendo-se a publicados na imprensa, a noção de trajetória será operacionalizada com base em Bourdieu, sendo o conceito de intelectual problematizado no diálogo com Gramsci, Vieira, Sirinelli e Gomes. O educador participou ativamente do cenário cultural e educacional paranaense, contribuindo para a criação de instituições culturais e dialogando com o público por meio da imprensa. Entre os anos de 1931 e 1932, em artigos publicados no jornal O Dia, foi assídua sua defesa da primazia da educação nos planos de reconstrução nacional e de um plano nacional de educação para o país a partir de pressupostos como a unidade do ensino em seus diversos níveis, a educação como direito de todos, a laicidade, a obrigatoriedade e a coeducação.

The rapid reception of Gregor Mendel's paper ‘Experiments on plant hybrids’ (1866) in the early decades of the twentieth century remains poorly understood. We will suggest that this reception should not exclusively be investigated as the spread of a theory, but also as the spread of an experimental and computational protocol. Early geneticists used Mendel's paper, as well as reviews of Mendelian experiments in a variety of other publications, to acquire a unique combination of experimental and mathematical skills. We will analyse annotations in copies of Mendel's paper itself, in early editions and translations of this paper, and in early textbooks, such as Reginald Punnett'sMendelism(1905) or Wilhelm Johannsen'sElemente der exakten Erblichkeitslehre(1909). We will examine how readers used copies of such works to reproduce the logic behind Mendelian experiments, either by recalculating results, or by retracing the underlying combinatorial reasoning. We will place...