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Today I'm pleased to welcome James Shortz. He joins us today to speak on his book in pursuit of the gene from Darwin to DNA. It seems to many that the most interesting figures in history are the writers the artists or the eccentric Bohemians. But Schwartz chooses to highlight the struggles of another group the scientists who over the course of a century founded the principles of genetics using primary sources and debunking some overly heroic tales of discovery. Schwartz examines the lives of these dedicated scholars and reveals how the professional and Percival are inextricably linked. Portraits photographs charts and original drawings allow for an accessible yet precise work of science history. Rowan Hooper from New Scientist writes often described as a noble quest for the truth. Science can also be messy and duplicitous never more so as this book reveals that in the search for the key to heredity the gene yet really has science involved such inspiring and passionate figures. Mendel Bates and Morgan Mueller whose names we may recognize but whose personal tales are relatively little told. Here is a story of genetics with the setbacks and breakthroughs carefully

explained and the human story including spells in Soviet prison camps and suicide attempts thrillingly evoked. Writer scientist and mathematician James Schwartz is a scholar and local author in Brookline. He's been featured several times in the end all best American science writing and Harvard bookstore is very excited to have him here to promote his first book. So everyone please join me in welcoming James Schwartz thanks. Thank you. Thank you Lilian. That was the lovely introduction and thank you all for coming. The story of genetics is remarkable in a number of ways. It's incredible that a solitary monk working alone in a monastery in Meridian still Asia divined the essence of genetics 965 Mendel got everything right. The fact that genes come in pairs one from the mother and one from the father that they're separate and incorruptible particles and that they're

separated into this there's these pairs are separated into sperm and in the process of sexual reproduction. Almost as remarkable as the fact that no one paid the slightest bit of attention to Mendel when he published his work and he was thoroughly ignored for 35 years. And when his work finally came to light in 1900 there was immense resistance to accepting it. Now Charles Darwin and his cousin Francis Galton who's lesser known but the the who coined the term eugenics and more or less invented the idea were working on the same problem as mental at the same time. And even though Darwin and gotten were far behind Mendel in their understanding because Darwin was the most famous scientist in England and possibly in the world his ideas about genes caught on and it's with him that the modern story of heredity begins. In 1868 Darwin published his theory of Pan Genesis which is his theory of

inheritance in Genesis the particles He postulated there were particles which he called camels which travelled from that each cell gave off a particle and it traveled through the blood and was collected in the reproductive organs where it could be passed on to the children. Now the key thing about these particles is that cells which are altered by experience gave off altered protocols so that if you neurons for example which were made smarter by studying. Made it gave off superior gambles which travel through the blood to the reproductive organs and you could pass on to your children so your children based on your fine study habits would also have fine study habits. Darwin also believed I mean remarkably to me when I when I first learned this he believed that if you want to see in a knife fight and got scarred the tissue would give off a scarred or damaged camels

and your children would inherit their scars and he had evidence for this which he presented. Now his cousin Dalton who for a deeply personal reasons didn't want to believe that anything that happened in your life could affect your heredity. Not having a good education couldn't affect it. Housing leisure time. Nothing that happened could affect you in particular your level of intelligence. He wanted intelligence to be entirely hereditary hereditary hereditary. He's the father a sort of the hereditary in view of intelligence. So he devised an experiment to test really he was hoping to disprove Darwin's theory of Genesis and the section I'm going to now where I begin I'm going to read two sections this one and one from later. Later in the history I'll begin with a letter from him proposing that the two collaborate. I want to make some experiments that have occurred to me in breeding animals and I want to procure a few

couples of marked and assured breeds as an afterthought seemingly intended to pique Darwin's interest he added. Pray excuse my troubling you the interest of the proposed experiment for it really is a curious one. Must be my justification golems experiment was designed to test for the presence of circulating particles that carried hereditary information circulation of the particles was the key to the inheritance of acquired traits for circulating particles were required to transmit changes in one part of the body to distant reproductive cells. The ubiquitous camels ought certainly to be found in the blood of mammals called in reasoned and thus it ought to be possible to transfer the Gamble's from one animal to another by performing a blood transfusion. In particular Garton proposed to transfuse blood from mongrel rabbits into pure breeds. If the theory were correct one would expect purebred rabbits containing mongrel Gamble's to give rise to mongrel progeny. A positive finding would go a long way toward establishing establishing the existence of circulating camels and their role in inheritance. A negative finding on the

other hand would constitute a near fatal blow to pan Genesis. For of blood did not contain camels then it seemed reasonable to conclude that cells of the body were not actively shedding them. And then there was no longer a mechanism by which to transmit acquired traits. Darwin's assistance to Garton would be invaluable. Not only was Darwin a compendium of information about the various breeds of rabbits and virtually any other animal or plant but he had a network of relationships with animal breeders throughout England. However it wasn't Darwin's connection or is the ass knowledge of the natural world that would be most helpful to Garten garden was lifted up by his connection to the great man himself. The fact that Darwin had been intoxicated by the rich by his initial reading of God's first book hereditary genius meant the world to him for sake in his usual reserve Darwin had written in December 18th 69. I've only read 50 pages of your book but I must exhale myself. Now something will go wrong in my inside. I do not think I ever in all my life read

anything more interesting and original in a swoon got and had written back the following day. There is no one in the world whose approbation in these matters could have the same weight as yours. Twenty years later on the occasion of being awarded the gold medal by the Royal Society got it still put Darwin before anyone I valued his encouragement and approbation more perhaps than that of the whole world. For his part Darwin leapt at the opportunity to test his hypothesis. Unaware of the perils the Supposed to his beloved penned Genesis with Darwin's help got in had no difficulty procuring several different rabbit breeds and enlisting an expert from the Zoological Society of it to help him with the transfusions into the juggler veins of his rabbits. In March 1870 got reported on the first experiment which had ended in premature death of the litter but contained a quote hopeful case. One of the offspring of a pair of true breeding silver Greys transfused with the blood of a common yellow showed a head much lighter than its siblings the head was certainly irregularly colored being

especially darker about the muzzle. But I did not and do not care to build about such anything about such vague facts Gauldin wrote Darwen expressing the cautious optimism of an impartial experimentalists. Quite sick with expected hope and doubt he added concealing perhaps even from himself the true nature of his hope and doubt. Two days later got reported in another sign that because it could be construed as evidence for mongrelization but immediately pointed out how it might not in fact mean anything at all. Consciously or not gotten was toying with with Darwin. It appears though that Darwin was not so easily put off the track several days after he got this letter Mrs. Darwin wrote to her daughter Henrietta with news of her father's collaboration. F. Dalton's experiments about rabbits are failing which is a dreadful disappointment to them both. At the end of the month gone sent another positive message proclaiming better news decidedly better. And again eight years later he reversed himself in Megara and wrote yet again of good Rabbit news. A white forefoot on one of the progeny of a transfused Oh by June this latest

evidence had begun to show signs of unraveling. Nine months later after several fair further failed attempts to show mongrel mongrelization gotten published an elegant paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in which he reported on the outcome of the rabbit experiments. The conclusion from this large series of experiments is not to be avoided he wrote with authority that the doctrine of Pan Genesis Pure and simple as I have interpreted it is incorrect. Despite the fact that the experiments had been pointing in this direction all along the Royal Society paper took Darwin completely by surprise in an uncharacteristic fit of pique he fired off an angry letter to nature. I have not said one word about the blood or about any fluid proper to any circulating system he objected indignantly. It is indeed obvious that the presence of camels in the blood can form no necessary part of my hypothesis for I refer an illustration of it to the lowest animal such as the protozoa which do not possess blood or any vessels and I refer to plants in which the fluid when present in the vessels cannot be considered as a blood. Gammas might well

move from one to shoot from one from tissue to tissue in some medium other than blood argue argue Darwin and the garden deserved the highest credit for ingenuity and perseverance. Darwin was not prepared to concede defeat. It does not appear to me that pan Genesis has as yet received its death blow. He wrote in his concluding sentence though from presenting so many vulnerable points its life is always in jeopardy and this is my excuse for having said a few words in its defense. Darwin's nature letter was somewhat disingenuous in that it provided no hint that he had been privy to the design and execution of the rabbit experiments from the beginning. His account was also subtly self-serving in another way. Well he had ascribed to insufficient Riyad reflection his failure to challenge the idea that the camels were present in the blood. He hadn't changed his mind after the hypothesis had been disproved as he later recognised it was bad science to undertake an experiment to test a hypothesis and finding the hypothesis disproved then to claim that the hypothesis was no longer relevant. The morning he received his

copy of nature containing Darwin's letter gotten the mediately set to work to repair the rift. My dear Darwin he wrote in great haste so as not to miss the morning mail. I am grieved beyond measure to learn that I have misrepresented your doctrine and the only consolation I can feel is that your letter to nature may place that doctrine in a clearer light and attract more attention to it. Although pan Genesis had escaped the fatal blow it had been badly wounded. It soon received another damaging blow from Dr. Lionel Beale a well respected scientist Doctor and inventor in another letter to the editor of Nature. Bill praised gardens numerous Well devise well devised difficult laborious and honest tests of Darwin's hypothesis. If such a well thought out and well executed series of experiments had no effect. Beale wrote. I do not believe it possible to obtain a series of experimental results which would lead the supporters of pen Genesis to abandon the hypothesis. Genesis was in Bill's estimation based quote upon the fictions of the fancy. Ever mindful of

Darwin and manipulating events to his own advantage. Garson gotten hastened to dissociate himself from the critical letter and commiserated with Darwin over the rough handling he'd had assuring them it assuring him that he did not in any way share the animists of the letter. The content of Beal's letter with which Darwin was in perfect accord with not mention but Gollum showed a new self-assurance deliberately despair just dispelling any hope that he might be one back to the cause. My new experiments are not hopeful alas he wrote in a postscript. I hope Genesis will get well discussed now. It is a testament to Darwin's forgiving and genial nature and gardens deep attachment to him that there conflict over penned Genesis did not cause a permanent rupture in their personal relationship. In fact both men continued on as if nothing much had happened despite the fact that they now both agree that the camels weren't likely in the blood and perhaps they ought not to have been looking for them there in the first place. The blood transfusions experiments continued by the winter of 1872 nearly three years after God had proposed the rabbit experiments. Even the infinitely

patient Darwin was showing signs of fatigue writing to go out and he ruefully reported that the last lot of rabbits bred perfectly true in character and that he was now ready to breed one more generation if the next one is as true as all the others. It seems to me quite superfluous to go on trying. At age 63 Darwin seems reluctant to waste any more time on Pen Genesis. My career is so nearly closed that I do not think it worthwhile to continue with the investigation. What little more I can do shall be chiefly new work. This must have been welcome news to garden as far as he was concerned the case against Darwin's flu. Darwin's fluidly changeable Gamble's was closed and the rabbit experiments had provided confirmation of what he had believed all along that heredity was immutable and the primary determinant of human nature. So this is an episode of the first episode I'd say in the history of the gene and I'll now take up. Some forty years later in the remaining time of this reading

and disc and going to read us a passage that concerns the last great battle over mentalism which is after 1900 Mendel was rediscovered and but first I very briefly want to bring you back to high school genetics. And it's just this is a very quick and I hope painless review. First there are two copies of each gene in each gene can come in a dominant or recessive form. And second if you have two copies of the dominant form you're or two copies of the repast recessive form you're called a homozygous for that gene you're homozygous for that sheep. And if you if you have one dominant and one recessive copy you're heterozygous. So they're homicide cases and and and you can be homozygous or hetero as I get for a particular gene. And lastly Mendel's classic law of segregation says if you cross two heterozygotes this gives a three to one ratio the dominant type to the recessive type. That's the famous 3 to

1 ratio that hopefully everybody remembers. So the section on now describes just then on our read describes the final battle in this protracted and surprisingly vitriolic and and disturbing battle over mentalism which lasted six years. There are four main characters Karl Pierson and Frank Weldon are on one side. They're the so-called biome attrition. It's a new school of biology and there they're very lightly opposed to the idea that there could be material particles like Mendel had suggested they're very unlikely anti-men Delia. And on the other side was William Bateson and at this point Charles Hearst who was. OK so Pearson Weldon and Bates and were all Oxbridge educated professor types and Charles Hearst was the son of a nursery owner and well-known breeder of orchids.

And wealth wealth and dates and had been in college best friends unbelievably close friends. And Weldon had introduced Bates into biology in the first place. And they had a fantastically strong connection which was entirely severed over mentalism. And they became in fact sworn enemies. So in this argument Bateson and Hearst are arguing that horse coat color it's all over a horse coat color. That's the big issue. They say that horse coat color like all other physical traits of animals and plants is determined by genes which can come in dominant and recessive forms and the biome attrition Pearson and Weldon deny that who deny the very existence of genes. They deny the very existence of genes and in 1908 Pearson had had published a paper in which he claimed that none of the coat colors not a brown black or Chestnut or grey but none of them the ones that we

this all turns on are bay Brown and Chestnut behave like men dealing in recessive or dominant genes. And if this is the case then they conclude that Mendel's laws simply are wrong and do not hold. So it's if this is the final stand their final stand because of course it turned out to be totally wrong. And in 1905 This is the section I'm going to read begins in 1005 and the war was raging and I'll just say one more thing which make it slightly easier to understand this which I'm taking up sort of in the midst of that chestnut color is recessive to bay bay is dominant. So if you have a. True breeding a home is I guess by a sire and a homozygous bay mare and breed them. They must give day offspring if Mendel's right. And likewise if you have a chestnut which is a homozygous recessive trait mated with a chestnut they must give chestnuts. If you see any bay

from that mating there is something wrong with Mendel's rules. So that's where we begin. And that's that's the setup for this. This section beginning in February in February 905 Bateson's friend and colleague Charles Hirst applied himself to the study of horse pedigrees and by March he'd begun to suspect the chestnut was was was was recessive with respect to bay. As Bateson pointed out Piers since 1803 paper had not mentioned a single case in which two chesnuts produce blacks or days which supported her theory. Furthermore Bateson wrote it was clear that they had purposely withheld the data in mid April Hearst had found the chestnut by chestnut crosses produced chestnut foals almost without exception and Bateson was dumbfounded. After Pearson statement he wrote Hirst I had no conception there was a clear case like that. However he doubted it would be possible to work out the color formulas based on the information from the stud records which provided too little data. Still the possibility of catching Pearson up and so grave an error an error was too tempting to resist and he

saw just how to do it by writing a letter to nature politely asking Pearson to point to the cases he had in his mind when he made the statement regarding chestnut. Perhaps they could get him to reveal the exceptional matings of chestnut by chestnut. It wants doing with great care he cautioned. Boyd by Bates and support Hurst now threw himself at the problem the first step was to check all the recorded foals produced by two chestnut parents. But the unraveling of the pedigrees from whether B's famous stud book which filled 20 volumes was a painstaking and tricky business to properly interpret the data in a single volume Hirst explained to Bates and required at least six other volumes adding to the difficulty was the fact that the sire's of the same name often had different colors and it required quotes horsey knowledge to get the pedigree right. Of April 25th with the help of his sister Hearst to check one hundred eighty falls from the chestnut by chestnut crosses and he had found only two exceptions. By May 9 the Hurst had looked at over a thousand chestnut by chestnut meetings and found nine that were reported to give other than chestnut

foals all the dates and doubted Pearson would know about the exceptions he thought it better not to risk a public challenge and suggested delaying the nature letter in the great game you must assume your opponent has overlooked nothing. He wrote her first over the summer every horse in the street had become an opportunity for further study. In September Bates and had worked through his reservations and it was agreed that Hearst would write up a short account of the horse coat results. Bateson as a member of the Royal Society would submit them for publication in the Society's influential proceedings. The paper which was submitted to the Royal Society in early November proposed that the difference between bays and browns on the one hand and chestnut horses on the other was controlled by one man Delian factor pair for black pigment both day and Brown were either homo or heterozygous for the dominant a Leo and chestnuts were homeless I guess for the recessive in conformity with men Delian expect expectations. Hirst did not find a single chestnut foal among three hundred seventy progeny of pure breeding Bay or browns Ayers. The

folds of chestnut made a chestnut were more than 99 percent chestnut less than 1 percent were exceptions which he attributed to breeders or printers errors. I think the horse paper a very remarkable piece of work and I'm proud to communicate it. Bateson wrote on November 1st Hurst paper was scheduled to be read at the Royal Society on Thursday December 7 at 4:30 pm. In the days preceding the climatic event Bateson sent a flurry of cards and letters with last minute suggestions and ideas. The day before the meeting Bateson suggested that he and Hirst meet at the Austro-Hungarian cafe at 1:15 p.m. and leave from there for the Royal Society. When he arrived Hirst found Bateson in a state of high nervous excitement over the upcoming battle and suggested they order a bottle of champagne. This idea har a fight Bateson who was in no mood for celebration or levity of any kind. After lunch the two men held a hansom cab which was drawn by a chestnut horse. As they climbed into the seats which were located in front of the driver but direct from directly behind the horse Bateson noticed that its tail was

exceptionally dark a darker shade than he had ever before encountered in a chestnut Hurst explained that the horse was in fact a very dark form known as a liver chestnut which had a chocolate colored tail but Bateson who had never seen such a horse before was convinced that the tail was black like the tail of the bay and grew increasingly agitated. When the ride was over Bateson prevailed on the cab driver to give him a sample of tail horsehair to bring back to his dorm for analysis. Hirst was last on the program and as soon as he had finished the presentation the bickering began. Unlike Hirst who was enlivened by the thrill of Bates and had a tendency to come undone in the face of confrontation even under the best circumstances Bateson would have found the prospect of direct confrontation with Weldon draining and debilitating. But the last minute jolt of anxiety provided by the handsome ride seemed to push him over the brink. Weldon listed a host of exceptions far more cases than Bates and had anticipated drawn from a large number of volumes of the stud book in the

heat of the argument Bates and brought out a poultry skin to illustrate a point and his opponents objected on the grounds that it was a discussion about horses. The chairman of the meeting concurred. This was the final straw. It said Bates and slamming the skin back into his bag announced that he was withdrawing the paper and returned to his seat. It hurst who was far more sanguine stepped up to assure Weldon that quote alleged exceptions were mere errors of entry to refute the specific claims would take a great deal of study in each individual case was clearly impossible on the spot. But Hurst direct denial and stout defense seemed to quiet the opposition and before he had finished Hearst had it extracted an agreement from Weldon that both sides should put the facts down on paper. In the coat room on the way out Hearst encountered Pearson who said in a fury. One thing you shall never be fellow here as long as I live. Later that night Bateson wrote hers that he felt utterly collapsed in that Weldon had inflicted a bad wound that won't heal for a long time. Nonetheless he had been filled with admiration of Hirst pluck and his own fundamental conviction that they were in

the right had not been shaken. It was now incumbent on hers to become half for some self and quote get back into the collar and pull us out of the mud. In his return letter Hearst apologized for getting them into the mud in the first place. But he expressed his doubt that Weldon would be able to make good on his promise to produce the figures he had presented on Thursday. His case simply would not hold up the stud book is full of pitfalls for the unwary he explained and records got out in a hurry will not stand the test of time for his own part he had already begun a thorough analysis of the stud book invalid. If it takes me 20 years I will now see it through. Hirst was now going full force making separate list of foals born of mares and foals born of Cyrus and double checking them one against the other. On December 19 he reported to Bates that he had classified two hundred twenty three mares and it had taken him fifty six hours to do it. It was highly complex and time consuming work but he was convinced that only by scouring the records was it possible to avoid mistakes and without such intense effort the results simply would not stand. I doubt if Weldon can spare the

time. Hirst gloated and second hand will not do it all. Although Weldon had always lived life at a fast pace beginning in 1904 a year before the horse code color transfer versey his friends began to worry that he might be overdoing it. The torpedo boat was running at full speed as Pearson described him. In addition to his frantic pace Pearson noted that Weldon had shown occasional signs of depression a lack of joyousness and life in Nov. 19 0 5 Weldon had interrupted his work on a heredity book in order to study horse color in preparation for the December 7th reading of Hearst paper at the Royal Society. His success in calling the opposition on December 7th meeting seemed to fuel him nine hours a day he threw himself into the study of whether B's stud book as he had pledged to do Weldon had completed a preliminary written account of his findings by January 906 which he read at the Royal Society on Jan. 18. The chance of obtaining a full that was not a chestnut from the meetings of two chesnuts Weldon now reported was one in 60. Clear

evidence of the fact that chestnut could not be regarded as a man dealing recessive after the January 18 meeting Bateson had no doubt that Weldon was bluffing and together he and Hurst drafted a short note to go after Hurst paper in which they pointed out that Weldon's entire argument was based on quote alleged alleged exam existence of exceptions and they illustrated the point with several examples. Although Hirst had never doubted it Bates and was now convinced that Weldon's case would not stand up. It was a testament to the power of wishful thinking that Pearson and Weldon continued to believe. In February Weldon rich retreated to Italy this time to Rome. Though he needed a holiday he wrote Pearson that he had felt compelled to bring along the volumes of his stud book. To sit here eight hours a day or so doing your clerk's work seems rather a waste of life. He wrote Pierson from his hotel room wishing he could he could partake in the pleasures of Rome from February to April he examined hundreds of pedigrees and his letters were filled only with crosses. Over Easter The Pearsons and Weldon's met for a joint vacation and will stone

about 20 miles from Oxford and while Jim was still hard at work in the stud book on Sunday April 8th Weldon biked into Oxford to develop photographs and complained of being tired after the trip which is extremely unusual for him. He got up for breakfast on Tuesday. On Monday he took a long walk over the downs and returned home late. He got up for breakfast on Tuesday but returned to bed afterward. Pearson visited that afternoon and Weldon insisted on smoking while he questioned Pearson on the on the solution to a new problem he was working on. The next day Weldon's wife begged him to stay in bed but he refused and instead went to town to visit an art gallery. On Thursday he had a dentist appointment from which he was taken first to a doctor and then to a hospital. He died of pneumonia the following day. Good Friday April 13th. It was shocking news to everyone. The most vigorous of men had been cut down in his prime for Pierce and it was a devastating loss of his dearest friend and his partner in the founding of a new school of biology. In early May Hearst sent Pearson a reprint of the

Horst code color paper which had appeared in print on the day of Weldon's death along with a brief note of condolence. Although Hearst had been moved by true regret Pearson refused to accept his condolences in Pearson's imagination. Weldon was a soldier who had died in battle and Pearson was not prepared to take succor from the enemy. Only a few days before his death he condemned in stronger language than I have ever heard him use of any individual the tone and contents of the note added to your paper. Pearson lashed out. It is a judgement of which I believe every man who has the interest of science at heart will concur. Although it was true that Hearst and Bateson had made scathing attacks in the heat of battle the laid out a postscript to Hearst paper it was an entirely dispassionate scientific assessment. I could have warned you Bateson wrote in astonished Hurst. After the death he had considered carefully whether to write himself he explained and he realized that it would be futile. But for Bates and Weldon's death involved a far more complex mix of emotions on the one hand he

clearly saw that the death of Weldon cleared the way for the broad acceptance of mentalism. Furthermore he was bitterly resentful at the unfair treatment that he had been subjected to convince that Weldon had been determined to destroy his work. But at the same time Bates in one the loss of his oldest friend. I was more intimate with him than I have ever been with anyone but you. Bateson wrote his wife who had been out of town the week Weald and in trying to put into words that well what Weldon had once meant to him what Weldon had once meant to him Bates and make clear how far things had gone wrong and how much good had been squandered. To Weldon I owe the chief awakening of my life. It was through him that I first learnt that there was work in the world which I could do failure and uselessness had been my accepted destiny before such a debt is perhaps the greatest that one man can feel toward another. Nor have I been backward in owning it. But this is the personal private obligation of my own soul. So with that I will end and

I open the floor to questions and be happy to talk about the latter the later history or anything else that's of interest to anyone. Well from from after the acceptance of mentalism in the early 1900s the next great center of activity the story started starts in England then moves to America and the next great center is the fly room at Columbia University where. Which was another scene full of personal conflicts and despite the official history it was a very fraught environment but there mentalism which was purely abstract system was combined with everything that was known about chromosomes which had been progressing rapidly through the 18th 60s to the present where it had become clear first that

the cells made up people that was made up of all living things that was in the 1840s but by the late 1860s that the nucleus contained the. The hereditary material in the 1870s that there were a rod like things in the in the nuclei which were chromosomes and in the 1880s that these came in pairs and were separated and by 19 0 to some. Graduate student at Columbia as well had shown that. That the chromosomes acted exactly they came in pairs and they separated into separate cells in their separate sperm and egg cells in that they behaved exactly as Mendelian said his factors would so that the whole picture coalesced. And in the in the. So the main thrust of the last part of the book is in this fly room in between 1915. It first they say they found a particular example of a gene and that it was located on a particular chromosome and from that which was the white

mutation of fruit fly fruit flies you had red eyes in this one white and they could map it to the X chromosome the sex chromosome and then they got six other mutations on the on the X chromosome of that awful and this was the first gene map and they so they they could put the genes in order and they said the distance between them. And this of course is was huge. And just a minute more on that is that all of this work was fantastically well received and made all of the occupants were very few. The small the fly room was very small about the size of this room or a little smaller and it was actually smaller than this room considerably smaller and this was 20 by 30 and. There were six there were four guys in it and Morgan ran it. Thomas Hunt Morgan and his crew his star graduate students his beloved and star graduate students were Alford Sturtevant and Calvin bridges and then there was an odd man out who was Herman Muller who is on the cover of this book because I consider him and I think it's of course I think it's right to

consider him the sort of genius of genetics of the 20th century and all the ideas so many of the ideas out of that firing were his and he wasn't credited for them. So this is the source of you know this is for me a writer that this thing's a great thing actually because the intrigue and the sort of misplaced. What was going on there was it was horrific really. Especially for Mahler because people were getting all these papers and the map of the gene maps were coming out and he was getting no credit. But he well I think the last thing I'll say about it is that he found a way around this because he started to study not seeming non-man Delian traits which turned out to be the complex poly genetic traits which everyone is now totally interested in things like diabetes and macular degeneration and schizophrenia all these things are complex apologetic things and Mahler gave the first you know method for

finding the genes involved in these traits and then I had the vision to see that how they might work that there would be all these modifier genes and. And it was a very complicated picture so this that's the where this The book goes after. Mahler or. First let me say that Mendel never won and Mendel was the greatest genius really and really divinely inspired and never and he used to mutter around in his monastery at least it's written by a contemporary of his reported that he's still going around saying my time will come. But it never came. And that's a very sad story but Mahler Yes I mean Mahler was just he was just a sort of an engine of ideas and he was unstoppable which I think Morgan and Sturtevant didn't count on and that whereas they were calcified sort of stayed put I mean they had done wonderful things I mean who if I had done anything like that I would be happily retired but Mahler didn't. And for example Mahler went on to show that

x rays caused mutations and this was a huge thing it was the first time that humans had ever manipulated their genetic material. And just to give you a feeling for how sour and twisted the relations were Morgan said you know this will be his undoing this will be Miller's final straw you know he's exaggerating the effect and finally he'll you know get what he deserves. And Mahler hearing you know has they all heard from everybody you know what they have said said Oh I'm so glad I hope he tells everyone that because when it turns out to be true you know it's going to make it much. And it did of course turn out to be totally true. Well it was a fascinating character and the reason I like to write it I mean he's a great subject for this. You know a hero of this book is because he he was he left the United States during the Depression and went to the Soviet Union because he was a valid communist socialist and hated what was going on the United States plus also he had his personal life was falling apart and he got all

involved with Stalin so his life and then almost was killed by Stalin for supporting genetics and eugenics and had to rush out of the Soviet Union so his story is really a rich one. Yes well OK so the question is you know were they on to poly genetic traits in then in the years from 1010 to 1915 but before that question there was the observation that Sarah Palin should be told about the fruit flies. It was amazing to me during that campaign that she started making fun of people studying fruit flies because all of classical genetics was done in fruit flies and this is the level of ignorance there is release. It's beautiful it's incredible. Someone should write a book. But yeah I mean the thing was that Mahler saw I mean for sort of twisted reasons. I mean he was done out of credit for the single gene work as everything was the things that were being mapped in the in the in the fly room where

single gene effects. And he wasn't allowed to participate in that works but he he went to look at a complicated trait which was that they had to fly with this very deformed wing. And he found that it didn't seem to obey any standard men dealy and segregation and you couldn't see it. And he devised an incredibly brilliant way of marking chromosomes and following the the the inheritance of the trait and the inheritance of individual chromosomes way before anyone even realized. Chromosomes are made of DNA or it was a stunningly brilliant piece of work and it is exactly the method and he said By the way in the paper that reported on this that once it becomes possible to make. To get once there are enough markers on human chromosome so that we can enough mutations known on human chromosomes we can do this for humans and then we can map. This is the side of him that's somewhat insane. Then we can map the genes that make people smart and we can find out the genes that make for a kindness. I mean he was a totally Genetically he

believe in genetic determinism way off the scale. But he he laid out the program and he succeeded in doing it and as I said you know this is the program that's been well of course with the genome mapping in 2001. And you know snips single nucleotide polymorphisms make it. Those are the markers that Mahler was looking for so 80 years later that stuff became available. He laid it out with perfect lucidity in 1013. So this guy's was really remarkable. And he is the father of multi gene and thinking it's ironic though because he's his eugenics is his his commitment to eugenics was so off the you know kind of crazy. And likewise Dalton also was studying complicated traits like height which is determined by many influenced by many genes. He also had a sort of insight. They were in particular drawn to these Palli genetic things because there was a things that would

influence man if man was to the extent man was genetically determined. Well I talk about my research process. Well most of my research is archival. It's going to libraries and it's very boring and. I mean from the outside it's very boring. But for example the story about wellness and or the Austro-Hungarian cafe. How would how would I know or how does you know how did I find out I mean this is one of the great triumphs of the research for this book how I found out that it was a great moment for me anyway when I found out there they were sitting in that bar in that well and in that Bates and whatnots because they were offering champagne and he didn't want he certainly didn't want Hirst to be drunk for this and he was a very he was a good drinker himself he was English after all. But he was. But he loved the drink but he was very upset by this in a nervous Nellie and the whole thing with the with the CAB DRIVER Well it was it was her first wife who was a younger woman and outlived him wrote a

thousand page history of genetics which is really unreadable although I read every word of it and it's in the Americans the library the American economy the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and you know I found it's in a whole filing cabinet and took me weeks to go through it. But in there she you know painstakingly describes these encounters and so that kind of thing. It was a great find. And then also you know from my work in journalism. I also am interested in always if there's anyone surviving who had any connection to the story I I always call them. And in particular I called Muller son who was 80 at the time when I started the research for this book and I said you know I'm very interested in your father. And he said well good for you. And I said that's. I said Well do you have any memories of your father and would you be willing to show them he said well I have a lot of memories of my father he was a gnarly guy I could tell and I said well his memories I know from long experience that people especially when they get older their memories are unreliable and you can't

anyway write about it you have to be able to footnote it in personal communication of an 18 year old as I said. So I always ask Do you have any pictures or documents. Well I have some letters of my father I said really letters that no one has seen because his father you know is a major figure. I try to make him even a more major figure but he was already he won the Nobel Prize. And he said. Well yes I have five hundred fifty letters. You're kidding I said What are they about his life or his science that I haven't read them. I said Really how long have you had them my mother gave up in 1054. I said well that's insane. Why haven't you read them. He said well because I hated my father. I said Really. Well why are you interested in reading them and he said well yes I think if I'm ever going to read them I better read them now. And I said Well would you mind if I came you know he lived in on the desert in New Mexico and I said Would you mind if I come down and read them with you said Oh that would be

great. So yeah we sat together for almost a month and he was an insomniac. And so we stayed up almost every night all night. And he was a brilliant guy I mean to the extent that it was right that everything is inherited genetically he certainly inherited his father's brain and he knew everything about math physics astronomy would go out and look at stars he knew all the all the desert foliage he knew everything. So he was a fan. But also he was you know. As little Asperger's I'd say if he didn't had never dealt with all these issues in his life so we were reading these and he would sometimes in the middle of the night he just be in tears sobbing and I was like I felt that this was almost like his psychoanalysis even though I'm not a you know even vaguely a psychoanalyst I felt like this guy is really getting a lot out here. And so it was an incredible experience that was the most vivid and exciting research experience I've had today.

This is more an observation that well the question is Where does my book Start stop but there's the observation that the field is continuing to advance at an incredible rate and someone needs to write a book about what's happening now. I'd first answer the first thing that this book goes up till the discovery of DNA and and which was foreshadowed again by Mahler. I mean he laid out everything that I think this isn't so well-known. I'll come back to that in one second. But from DNA on there's the eighth day of creation Jetson which is a remarkably book and you know very thorough and great. So that takes you know and as for the president well we could discuss that maybe between us afterward but I just want to make the point that this way of thinking you know if people don't realize that you know everyone thinks that the story started molecular biology started in 1953 when Watson and Crick made their discovery and it really isn't so. And I you know I'm hoping that this my book would wreak to correct that view because for example I

mean the one of the great example of this is Mahler. He in one thousand twenty two said look he said whatever the DNA whatever the hereditary information is it has to have the following properties it has to have it has to. Genes have to lay down copies of themselves beside themselves and then they have to from the from the cell protoplasm get. They must be made of sub units and very few sub units he said very few. And those are obviously the nuclear types and then he said and it's the order of the sub units that determines what that particular gene will do. That's the sequence that's the code. And then he said that this is most remarkable of all to me. He said that a mutation is a change in that order. So he got it I mean this is the conceptual all the irrelevant conceptual facts about DNA and it's not a coincidence that Watson and Watson in particular who was a student in 1989 just before he went to England first of all he was a student and part of the archival work list I looked at his

notes from that class. He's an incredibly anal guy and that they were beautiful notes and he got an A-plus and he listened to everything that was said. So when he went to England he brought he was saturated in Mahler's idea about the gene and he brought it to Crick who was very much involved in the latest technology about crystallography and didn't have a clue what a gene was. So it was this you know incredible confluence of information flows that resulted in the in getting the double helix. And I think that you know it's you know so that I think I think I'll leave it at that but you know the current situation and the you know. I at least as far as students go I think that the best way to deal with genetics is to look at obviously I think this is to look at it in its historical context I think that's true of science of all science in math too it was I was a graduate student in math for many years and that you they bury the meaning of a theorems

in the way that a theorem is presented is so abstract. And then when you actually find the story of how it happened it's so much easier to understand you know that it went this way and then this guy thought this was this and then you know it's it's done it becomes much more human and easier to grasp at least for someone like me. So you know I think that for the problem of scientists communicating with each other they should steep themselves a little bit more and history and human understanding of how things are discovered. Well I think that's all I think thank you very much.