Animal genetics / Frederick B. Hutt.

  • Frederick Hutt
Date:
[1964]
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Animal genetics / Frederick B. Hutt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    472/578 page 450
    20 Biochemical Genetics Let no reader assume, because only one short chapter among 21 others in this book is entitled Biochemical Genetics, that chemistry is a minor part of genetics. Far from it. Apart from applications of genetics in the breeding of better plants and animals, the role of genetics in evolution, and statistical studies of genes in populations, much of genetics is really chemistry. Most of the variations men¬ tioned in earlier chapters result from the effects of molecules of de¬ oxyribonucleic acid. A red calf is red because his genes so direct chemical processes that they produce a red melanin, not a black one. Genes influencing cellular metabolism cause normal or abnormal development, conditions viable or lethal, low or high productivity, and all the other variations we have been considering. Effects of genes that influence form and color in higher organisms are much easier to recognize than genetic variations in physiology, and many genetic variations in cellular chemistry can be identified only by special kinds of chemical analyses. It is these last that are often classified as the special province of biochemical genetics. Studies in this field have been facilitated in the last 20 years by im¬ proved techniques for biochemical analyses, such as microbiological assays and the differentiation of proteins by their rates of flow in electrophoretic currents. More books on biochemical genetics have appeared in the last five years than in the previous fifty. Garrod and Genetic History It is of interest to note, however, that the first investigations in this important area actually antedate the re-discovery of Mendel's laws. It is commonly written that the father of biochemical genetics was A. E. Garrod, whose book. Inborn Errors of Metabolism, pub- 450
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