Genetic Analysis: A History of Genetic Thinking »

There is a paradox lying at the heart of the study of heredity. To understand the ways in which features are passed on down from one generation to the next, we have to dig deeper and deeper into the ultimate nature of things - from organisms, to genes, to molecules. And yet as we do this, increasingly we find we are out of focus with our subjects. What has any of this to do with the living, breathing organisms with which we started? Organisms are living. Molecules are not. How do we relate one to the other? In Genetic Analysis, one of the most important empirical scientists in the field in the twentieth century attempts, through a study of history and drawing on his own vast experience as a practitioner, to face this paradox head-on. His book offers a deep and innovative understanding of our ways of thinking about heredity.

List of figures xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

Part I From Reproduction and Generation To Heredity 11

1 The biologization of inheritance 14

2 Mendel: the design of an experiment 25

Part II Faktoren in Search of Meaning 39

3 From Faktoren to unit characters 44

4 The demise of the unit character 58

Part III The Chromosome Theory of Inheritance 75

5 Chromosomes and Mendelian Faktoren 77

6 Mapping the chromosomes 94

7 Cytogenetic analysis of the chromosomes 108

Part IV Genes as the Atoms of Heredity 125

8 Characterizing the gene 128

9 Analysis of the gene by mutations 141

10 From evolution to population genetics 158

Part V Increasing Resolving Power 171

11 Recruiting bacteria and their viruses 178

12 Molecular "cytogenetics" 191

13 Recombination molecularized 202

Part VI Deducing Genes from Traits, inducing Traits from genes 209

14 How do genes do it? 211

15 The path from DNA to protein 220

16 Genes in the service of development 231

Part VII What is true for E. Coli is not True for the Elephant 245

17 Extending hybridization to molecules 249

18 Overcoming the dogma 259

19 Dominance 268

20 Populations evolve, organisms develop 274

Concluding comments 287

Bibliography 293

Index 321