February 23, 2019 Saturday
Bedtime Story
Barbara McClintock was Following the Steps of Gregor Mendel
Corporate funding is pathetically meager at
the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory even though eventually it would be giant
pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporations who would go on to exploit and
profit from the discoveries that are coming out from laboratories such as
these.
It would be in this laboratory in the 1940s
and 1950s through the war years where Barbara McClintock made extremely
interesting but “controversial” observations of those times that would be
received by the establishment with “puzzlement, even hostility”.
Can you even guess what was she interested
at?
Some of the seeds of the maize plant
exhibited mosaic color patterns that seemed to show no consistency or rather
large variability in their inheritance.
It would not be something that would grab
the attention of an average mind, isn’t it?
For some reason it grabbed the attention of
Barbara McClintock and she began to study this queer and unstable inheritance
of these mosaic patterns of the maize seeds very systematically.
She reminds me of the Austrian friar Gregor
Mendel who had taken similar but extraordinary interests in the traits of pea
plants including the pod shape and color.
For those of who hold the view that Mendel
was simply an amateurish botanist who took a vague interest in inheritance of
pea plant characteristics I will let you have know that not only did he take
meticulous notes but also presented it in a form of paper, not once but twice.
This I am talking about the year of 1865
when ordinary Hindus and Europeans were struggling for making a decent living,
and by “decent” it is nothing close to which even an average citizen of a
third-world enjoys (think about running water in your tap and toilets,
electricity in your home, a heater or an air-conditioner to manipulate your
local climate and of course, your beloved smart phones that you can never get
enough of).
In not one but two meetings of the Natural
history Society of Brno in Moravia (now in Czech Republic) on February 8 and
March 8 of 1865 Mendel presented his paper titled “Experiments on Plant
Hybridization”.
It is said of Mendel that his results were
“too good” which implies that Mendel was selective in data that he chose.
The basic essence of the paper can be
summarized in the form of the following table:
CHARACTERSTICS CONTRASTINGTRAITS
OFFSPRINGTRAITS
Flower color Violet and White Violet
Flower position Axial and Terminal Axial
Plant Height Tall and Dwarf Tall
Seed Texture Round and Wrinkled Round
Seed Color Green and Yellow Yellow
Pea Pod Texture Inflated and Constricted Inflated
Pea Pod Color Green and Yellow Green
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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