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Mendel and Darwin.
- Source :
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . 7/26/2022, Vol. 119 Issue 30, p1-10. 10p. - Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- Evolution by natural selection is an explicitly genetic theory. Darwin recognized that a working theory of inheritance was central to his theory and spent much of his scientific life seeking one. The seeds of his attempt to fill this gap, his “provisional hypothesis” of pangenesis, appear in his notebooks when he was first formulating his evolutionary ideas. Darwin, in short, desperately needed Mendel. In this paper, we set Mendel’s work in the context of experimental biology and animal/plant breeding of the period and review both the well-known story of possible contact between Mendel and Darwin and the actual contact between their ideas after their deaths. Mendel’s contributions to evolutionary biology were fortuitous. Regardless, it is Mendel’s work that completed Darwin’s theory. The modern theory based on the marriage between Mendel’s and Darwin’s ideas as forged most comprehensively by R. A. Fisher is both Darwin’s achievement and Mendel’s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *PLANT breeding
*NATURAL selection
*LABORATORY animals
*BIOLOGY
*NOTEBOOKS
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00278424
- Volume :
- 119
- Issue :
- 30
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 158253263
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2122144119