Genetics, medicine, and man / H. J. Muller, C. C. Little , Laurence H. Snyder.
- Hermann Joseph Muller
- Date:
- 1947
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Credit: Genetics, medicine, and man / H. J. Muller, C. C. Little , Laurence H. Snyder. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![GENETICS, MEDICINE, AND MAN ability to reproduce itself, even in its changed form, on the same medium as before. From this it is evident that in some way the gene is able to impress its own pattern upon substances in the medium, and that even when that pattern is changed, it still retains this power. It is this that most strikingly distinguishes a gene from other so-called autocatalytic substances, and renders it the only fit material to form the basis of life. For it is the duplication of mutations which constitutes the core of the process of evolution, and life can be understood only in terms of the evolution that has made it what it is. The few hypotheses advanced in partial explanation of the peculiar self-duplicating power of the gene that allows it to copy even its own variations belong as yet rather in the realm of specu¬ lation. It would take us too far afield to review these here. The view preferred by the author is that the scattered materials of the medium are arranged by the gene into a pattern like its own by means of the very same forces that have been found to bring like genes together during the process called synapsis (a process which we shall further consider below). For if we assume that each given part of a gene that forms an element of its mutable pattern is able to attract to itself a like part that had been floating in uncombined fashion in the surrounding medium, just as the gene as a whole attracts to itself another whole gene that is like it, then the various disorganized parts present in the medium would become gathered together next to the mother gene in an arrangement like its own, and so a replica of the old gene would be created. It has long been denied by physicists that such specific forces of attraction can oper¬ ate over distances large enough to be microscopically visible, as appears to be true of the synaptic forces. This difficulty of the specificity of the forces can be overcome, however (as was pointed out independently by Jordan [1938], the present writer [1941], and Fabergé [1942]), if we suppose them to involve some sort of periodic movement or vibration, those of like kind causing at¬ traction; there is some recent experimental evidence by Bernal and Fankuchen (personal communication) in favor of this view, derived from their studies on viruses. It is as yet too early to conclude with certainty that gene re- 26](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18029152_0043.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
