The chromosomes / by M.J.D. White.

  • Michael James Denham White
Date:
[1961]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The chromosomes / by M.J.D. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/144 page VI
    vi THE CHROMOSOMES to quote ' chapter and verse ' for each statement. I mention this in apology for a certain amount of dogmatism imposed by limitations of space. The illustrations are essentially diagrammatic and designed to illustrate principles rather than to serve as actual illustrations of cell-division in particular organisms. In any subject it is impossible to avoid technical terms, but I have endeavoured to reduce them to a minimum, and have explained in the text all those which are not self-explanatory. Where a term occurs for the first time and is defined it is printed in italics. In the description of meiosis I have adopted the term bivalent instead of tetrad as being far less likely to cause confusion. Barbarous terms such as ' hetero¬ typic ' homotypic ', ' preheterokinesis ' and ' posta- crosyndesis ' have done more to frighten the general biologist away from chromosome cytology than any¬ thing else, and those authors who introduced them must bear responsibility for the delayed integration of cytology into general biological knowledge. Only by a rigid avoidance of such terms can we hope to link up the study of the nucleus with colloid chemistry on the one hand and with animal and plant breeding on the other. For those who find certain parts of the book diffi¬ cult to understand, I would recommend the use of some models, which can be constructed in a few minutes out of soft copper wire or plasticine, using the illustrations as a guide. With the aid of these it should be possible for anyone to understand the details of chiasma-formation and meiosis. Department of Zoology, University College, London, April 1937.
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