Abstract
DR. PAUL G. 'ESPINASSE voices1 misgivings about Mather's polygenic interpretation of selection which are, no doubt, widely felt outside the field of genetics. Each step in the development of genetic theory has given rise to such misgivings. Mather's explanations of his experiments, however, cannot be dismissed as epicyclic (nor for that matter will epicyclic explanations always explain anything). The assumption of polygenes is not even a priori. Hereditary properties are very generally known to show mutation, segregation and linkage. Polygenic variability depends on units, factors, elements, or (why not say it?) genes, which show mutation, segregation and linkage. These are indeed the required criteria. Many important hereditary properties are not individually identifiable. There are hundreds of incompatibility or self-sterility genes known in flowering plants and fungi. Sometimes these genes include only one allelomorphic series, sometimes two. In either case they are not individually but only relationally identifiable. Yet for twenty years no one has questioned the validity of the gene explanations of Kniep and East.
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NATURE, 149, 732 (1942).
NATURE, 149, 66 (1942).
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DARLINGTON, C. The Polygene Concept. Nature 150, 154 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150154a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150154a0
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