Abstract
At the turn of the past century, the field of heredity included embryology, regeneration, and genetics. Discussions of genetics necessarily entailed a theory of development, and any theory of development had to show why eggs of different species developed in different ways. Thus, the theories of William Keith Brooks (1) or August Weismann (2) did not distinguish between genetics and embryology. The developmental mechanics of His, Roux, and Driesch likewise contained explicit genetic components whereby the hereditary determinants (thought to reside within either the cytoplasm or the nucleus) were seen to direct the processes of organ formation and cell differentiation.
If ever a history of ideas in developmental genetics were to be written… it would no doubt include as one of its most important chapters an account of the intellectual role that “inductive interaction” between the fields of genetics and embryology has played in the analysis of developmental mechanisms and their genetic control in higher organisms
Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch (1981)
… the outsider sees most of the game Conrad Hal Waddington (1968)
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Notes and References
Brooks, W. K., 1883, The Law of Heredity, Murphy Press, Baltimore, pp. 32–33.
Weismann, A., 1893, The Germ-Plasm: A Theory of Heredity, Walter Scott, London (trans. by W. N. Parker and H. Ronnfeld).
Gilbert, S. F., 1978, The embryological origins of the gene theory, J. Hist. Biol. 11: 307–351.
Driesch, H., and Morgan, T. H., 1895–1896, Zur Analysis der ersten Entwickelungstadien des Ctenophoreneis I. Von der Entwickelungeinzeluer Ctenophorenblastomeren, Arch Entwick. 2:204–215. Experiments analyzed in Morgan, T. H., 1897, The Frog’s Egg, Macmillan, New York, p. 135.
Stevens, N. M., 1905, Studies in spermatogenesis with especial reference to “The Accessory Chromosome,” Carnegie Institution, Washington, DC; and Wilson, E. B., The chromosomes in relation to the determination of sex in insects, Science 22:501–502. These papers are discussed hi Ref. (3).
Morgan, T. H., 1909, Sex determination and parthenogenesis in phylloxerans, Science 29: 236.
Gilbert, S. E, 1988, Cellular politics: Ernest Everett Just, Richard B. Goldschmidt, and the attempt to reconcile embryology and genetics, in: The American Development of Biology ( R. Ranger, K. R. Benson, and J. Maienschein, eds.), University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp. 311–346.
Sapp, J., 1987, Beyond the Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Strugglefor Authority in Genetics, Oxford University Press, New York.
Morgan, T. H., 1926, The Theory of the Gene, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Gluecksohn-Waelsch, S., 1986, The causal analysis of development in the last half century: A personal history; unpublished manuscript delivered at Embryonic Origins and Control of Neoplasia conference, Dubrovnìc, Yugoslavia, Oct. 13–16, 1986. It should be remembered, too, that Spemann was also given boring topics by his thesis and habilitation advisor, Boveri, and Holtfreter (Chapter 6, this volume) also complains of Spemann’s giving him a boring project.
Interview with S. Gluecksohn-Waelsch, Oct. 31, 1988. Judaism was not a casual concern to Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer. She recounts that in the 1920s she was a Socialist—Zionist, and that she entered biology in order to have something useful to teach on a kibbutz in Eretz Israel.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, S., 1938, The development of two tailless mutants in the house mouse, Genetics 23: 573–584.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, S., 1940, The effect of an early lethal (to) in the house mouse, Genetics 25:391–400. Further evidence from Gluecksohn-Waelsch and her collaborators failed to confirm this hypothesis, although reports in 1990 have provided evidence for it. For years, it was thought that the T/t-complex encodes numerous proteins that were critical for cell—cell adhe-
sivity in the early mouse embryo. But it did not appear that T-gene expression was confined to the mesoderm (see Bennett, D., 1975, The T-locus of the mouse, Cell 6:441–454). In 1990, Herrmann and his collaborators (Nature 343:617, 657) cloned the T-gene and correlated the expression of this gene with embryonic lethality. The expression of this gene was found only in the early mesoderm cells and the epithelium that gives rise to them. Eventually, the T-gene is expressed only in the notochord. These data were interpreted to indicate that the T-gene plays a direct role in mesoderm formation and in the morphogenesis of the notochord. Yanagisawa (1990, Jap. J. Genet. 65:287–297) similarly hypothesizes that the T-locus products are involved in inducing the chordamesoderm.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, 1938, p. 573.
Spemann, H., 1936, Experimentelle Beiträge zu einer Theorie der Entwicklung, Verlag Julius Springer, Berlin.
Sander, K., 1986, The role of genes in ontogenesis: Evolving concepts from 1883–1983 as perceived by an insect embryologist, in: A History of Embryology ( T. J. Horder, J. A. Witkowski, and C. C. Wylie, eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 363–395.
Landauer, W., 1944, Length of survival of homozygous creeper fowl embryos, Science 100: 553–554.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, 1940, p. 399.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, S., 1949a, Causal analysis of mouse development by the study of mutational effects, Growth Symp. 9: 163–176.
Gluecksohn-Waelsch, S., 1981, Viktor Hamburger and developmental genetics, Hamburger Festschrift, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 44–52.
Ibid., p. 47.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, S., 1949b, The effects of a lethal mutation responsible for duplications and twinning in mouse embryos, J. Exp. Zool. 110: 47–76.
Spemann, H., 1903, Entwicklungsphysiologische Studien am Tritonei III, Roux Arch. Ent. Org. 16: 551–631.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, 1949b, p. 48.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, 1949a, p. 166.
Gluecksohn-Schoenheimer, S., 1945, The embryonic development of mutants of the Sd-strain of mice, Genetics 30: 29–38.
Waddington, C. H., 1940, Organisers and Genes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 1.
Waddington, C. H., 1975, The practical consequences of metaphysical beliefs on a biologist’s work: An autobiographical note. The Evolution of an Evolutionist, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, pp. 3, 5.
Yoxen, E., 1986, Form and strategy in biology; Reflections on the career of C. H. Waddington, in: A History of Embryology ( T. J. Horder, J. A. Witkowski, and C. C. Wylie, eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 309–329.
Ibid., p. 313.
If Waddington might be compared to a pluripotential stem cell migrating through various morphogenetic fields, then it is of interest that three of his major evocators were women. Waddington traced his interest in evolution to Miss G. L. Elles, his interest in genetics to Miss E. R. Saunders, and his training in embryology to Dame Honor Fell. He was called to the attention of Dame Fell by another woman, Miss Sidney Cox. (Robertson, A., 1977, Conrad Hal Waddington: 8 November 1905–26 September 1975, Biograph. Mem. F.R.S. 23:575–622.)
Waddington, C. H., Needham, J., and Brachet, J., 1936, Studies on the nature of the amphibian organization centre. III. The activation of the evocator, Proc. Roy. Soc. (Lond.) B 120: 173–198.
Waddington, C. H., Needham, J., Nowinski, W. W., and Lemberg, R., 1935, Studies on the nature of the amphibian organization centre. I. Chemical properties of the evocator, Proc. Roy. Soc. (Lond.) B 117: 289–310.
Needham, J., 1936, Order and Life, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Waddington, C. H., and Needham, D. M., 1935, Studies on the nature of the amphibian organization centre. II. Induction by synthetic polycyclic hydrocarbons, Proc. Roy. Soc. (Lond.) B 117: 310–317.
Yoxen, 1986.
A similar hypothesis has recently been proposed for the release of an internal regulatory protein that is essential for B-cell differentiation. Here, the regulatory protein NF-KB is found in every
Induction and the Origins of Developmental Genetics 205
cell, but it is usually complexed with its inhibitor, IKB. The inhibitory complex can be dissociated by several externally applied reagents, but occurs naturally only during lymphocyte development (Baeuerle, P. A., and Baltimore, D.,1988, IKB:A specific inhibitor of the NF-KB transcription factor, Science 242: 540–546.
Yoxen, 1986.
Abir-Am, P., 1988, The assessment of interdisciplinary research in the 19305: The Rockefeller Foundation and physico-chemical morphology, Minerva 26: 153–176.
Waddington, C. H., 1939, Preliminary notes on the development of wings in normal and mutant strains of Drosophila. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 25: 299–307.
Beadle, G. W., and Ephrussi, B., 1935, Differenciation de la couleur de l’oeil cinnabar chez la Drosophile (Drosophila melanogaster), C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 201: 620–622.
Waddington, C. H., 1939, Genes as evocators in development, Growth (Suppl. 1): 37–44.
Waddington, C. H., 1939, An Introduction to Modern Genetics, Macmillan, New York.
Ibid., p. 184.
Waddington, 1940, p. 88.
Ibid., p. 92.
Ibid., p. 184.
Ibid., p. 3. This insistence on placing the mechanism of gene action in the context of embryonic development continued to be a theme in Waddington’s work. In Principles of Embryology, Macmillan, New York (1956), he would claim that “whatever the immediate operations of the genes turn out to be, they most certainly belong to the category of developmental processes and thus belong to the province of embryology.” The problem of gene activity “is essentially an embryological problem.”
Ibid., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 55.
Ibid., p. 50.
Waddington, C. H., 1941, Canalization of development and the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Nature 150: 563–565.
That was not, however, how Waddington’s “genetic assimilation” was usually interpreted. While Lerner, 1958 (The Genetic Basis of Selection, University of California Press, Berkeley), and Merrell, 1962 (Evolution and Genetics, Rhinehart, and Winston, New York), saw genetic assimilation as a way of explaining so-called Lamarckian inheritance in terms of orthodox Darwinism, two of the major interpreters of evolutionary theory, Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr, interpreted Waddington’s theory as being a failed attempt to support Lamarckian inheritance. Both Mayr, 1963 (Animal Species and Evolution, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.) and Dobzhansky, 1970 (Genetics of the Evolutionary Process, Columbia University Press, NY, pp. 210–211) claimed that there was no genetic assimilation, and what Waddington saw in his experiments was merely the selection of preexisting variants in the population. Waddington’s term “genetic assimilation” was poorly chosen in that it did convey a notion that physiological responses could be readily fixed in the genome. Given that this type of assimilation was the basis for the neo-Lamarckian research program of Trofim Lysenko and that many British Marxists were supporting Lysenko, it is not hard to understand how Waddington’s views could be thought of as subscribing to a goal-directed inheritance of acquired characteristics. Gilbert (The embryo as self: The role of induction in creating self. In (A. Tauber, ed.) Organism and the Origins of self. Kluwer Press, Dordrecht. (In press)), attempts to show how “transfer of competence” (the basis for Waddington’s genetic assimilation) can explain several problems in developmental biology.
The neo-Lamarckian character of French studies on “adaptive enzymes” has been noted by Sapp, 1987, p. 135.
Abir-Am, P., 1987, The Biotheoretical Gathering, transdisciplinary authority, and the incipient legitimation of molecular biology in the 1930s: New historical perspective on the historical sociology of science, J. Hist. Sci. 25: 1–71.
Haraway, D., 1976, Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth Century Developmental Biology, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Wersky, G., 1978, The Visible College: The Collective Biography of British Scientific Socialists of the 1930s, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York.
Needham, J., 1943, A biologist’s view of Whitehead’s philosophy (1941), in: Time: The Refreshing River, Macmillan, New York, p. 188.
Waddington, C. H., unpublished lecture notes: Marxism and Biology, University of Edinburgh archives. Courtesy of Dr. P. Abir-Am.
Waddington, C. H., 1970, Behind Appearances, MIT Press, Cambridge, p. 114.
Waddington, 1975, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 10.
Waddington, 1939, p. 187.
Waddington, 1941.
Waddington, C. H., 1938, The morphogenetic function of a vestigial organ in the chick, J. Exp. Biol. 15: 371–384.
Gilbert, S. F., (In press) Epigenetic landscaping: C. H. Waddington’s use of cell fate bifurcation diagrams. Biol. Phil.
Whitehead, A. N., 1929, Process and Reality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 127, 151.
Ibid., p. 151.
Waddington, 1975, p. 5.
Waddington, 1940, pp. 3–4.
Ross Granville Harrison may have had a similar approach to induction—competence. In his 1933 review, “Some difficulties with the determination problem” (Am. Naturalist 67:306–321), Harrison wrote that no one factor determines a tissue to the exclusion of other factors. Waddington paraphrased this when he wrote (Organisers and Genes, p. 4) that “No ‘stimulus,’ no simple cause, is itself an adequate explanation of anything.”
Waddington, C. H., 1956, Principles of Embryology, Macmillan, New York, p. 348.
Ibid., p. 360.
There is some historical irony here. In 1896, E. B. Wilson used protist models of differentiation to show that the nucleus dominated the cytoplasm. (For details see Ref. 8, and Sapp, Chapter 11, this volume).
Waddington, 1956, p. 350.
Waddington, 1956, p. 412.
Waddington, C. H., 1962, New Patterns in Genetics and Development, Columbia University Press, New York.
Huxley, J., 1930, Spemann’s “Organisator” and Child’s Theorie der Axialen Gradienten, Naturwissen. 18: 265.
Watanabe, Y., and Child, C. M., 1933. The longitudinal gradient in Stylochus ijimai: With a critical discussion, Physiol. Zool. 6: 542–591.
Goldschmidt, R. B., 1938, Physiological Genetics, McGraw Hill, NY.
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Gilbert, S.F. (1991). Induction and the Origins of Developmental Genetics. In: Gilbert, S.F. (eds) A Conceptual History of Modern Embryology. Developmental Biology, vol 7. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6823-0_9
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