Attack On Chromosomes

Dr. Percy Brian, a micro-biologist, then went on to the [unclear: hrt] of the technical problem. The likeness between parent and offspring Has been attributed to the passage of genetical material-genes. Modem geneticists do not say that genes wholly determine the character of the organism which is the product of the interaction of genes and environment. But all say that environment has no effect on the gene itself. He then emphasised the interconnection of phenomena, that modern science finds itself, dealing with processes, not things, that cell metabolism is a constant flux and interchange of material and asked if the assumption that such genes, like surging rocks in a moving ocean, did not seem a little strange. The Conference report showed the existence of a tremendous body of experimental evidence supporting Lysenko well known to the scientists participating but not known here. It was found that stock and scion inter-effect each other and a proportion of the seed of one carries on the effect. Plants were "trained" by changes of environment affecting their various stages—by such means a spring wheat with 28 chromosomes became a winter wheat with 42 chromosomes—in a discrete step with no intermediate stage. If experimentation is carried on in the right way environmental changes can become hereditary. Hereditary transmission of environmental effects do not take place of course in an absolute way.

(Haldane later in discussion ran through a whole list of environmental changes which western geneticists had shown produced heredity changes—water, oxygen, etc., as well as X-rays, etc.—and asked where was the western assumption that environment has no effect on the genes.)

Others suggested that chromosomes are not in the genes but throughout the protoplasm. Although there is here a slight convergence of Lysenko and the classicalists the basic difference remains.

Brian then dealt with some relevant aspects of micro-biology. An important practical problem here is the training of micro-organisms to resistance to drugs. Gale experimented with micro-organisms in relation to resistance to penicillin and found discontinuous change that cannot be explained by selective mutation. Flenschelwood of Oxford found certain effects which could be explained better as a direct effect on the organism and not by chromosome theory. Auxiliary hypotheses to the chromosome theory may enable present theories to be bolstered but they become more and more obstruse and less and less a useful guide to future investigation and an explanation of observed facts.

The Russians admit that much remains to be done and that Lysenko has not a fully cut-and-dried theory to replace the old, but this is never so with new theories.