February 26, 2019 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Zea mays vs Drosophilia melanogaster
Tonight we shall continue with the first
paragraph of the 1950 paper of Barbara McClintock that was published in PNAS
titled “The origin and behavior of multiple loci in maize”.
“The terms mutable genes, unstable genes,
variegation, mosaicism, mutable loci or “position effect” have been applied to
this phenomenon.
Its occurrence in a wide variety of
organism has been recognized.
The most extensive investigations of this
phenomenon have been undertaken in Drosophilia melanogaster.
In this organism, the conditions associated
with the origin of genic instability have been well defined.
The part played by the heterochromatic
materials of the chromosomes, in inducing and controlling the type of
variegation and its time and frequency of occurrence, has been established.
It has not been generally recognized that
the instability of genic expression in other organisms may be essentially the
same as that occurring in Drosophilia.”
Note the use of the word “genic” as
contrast to today’s genetic which reflects that genetics was at its extremely
nascent stage then.
Drosophilia melanogaster as you would be
aware is the common fruit fly though it is neither very commonly seen nor is it
truly a fruit fly in any meaningful way.
It has been one of the most famous subjects
of study by the geneticists with eight Nobel Prizes been conferred for work
done on this organism which is largely a pest for humans.
The American entomologist who founded and
established the Entomology Department at the University of California, Berkeley
was the first person to propose this rather unattractive fly to be the model
organism for genetic researchers.
Considering from the way genetics has
evolved after him there is no doubt that his suggestion was taken seriously.
It is important that you as an ape
understand the concept behind the model organism for it has profound
implications.
Model organism is any non-human species
that is extensively studied by us apes with the hope that what will be
discovered in them will be and can be broadly generalized to the biological
systems of others organisms with humans being the prime beneficiary eventually.
They also serve as in vivo models on which
experimentation is conducted for medical reasons when it is not feasible to do
so on humans or not recommended on us apes on ethical grounds.
A lot of medicines that you consume and on
which we survive have come through such experimentations.
But why do you think this kind of modeling
works?
What is the basis for constituting the concept
of model organism?
This, Mon Ami, is evolution by natural
selection and thereby common descent of all living organisms.
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.
Advertisements
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:
No comments:
Post a Comment