Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 13, No. 12. June 15, 1950

Chimeras

Chimeras

A certain amount of the evidence of vegetative hybridisation can be attributed to the occurence of chimeras, i.e.. plants which, as a result of grafting have fused their tissues although the individual tissues retain their individuality to the extent that they are recognisable cytologically as coming from their respective parents. Such plants can only be reproduced by cuttings or further graftings as any seeds which may be produced will be formed from one tissue or the other and will show only those characteristics of the parent from which the tissue came.

As was noted in the tomato experiment, Lysenko and his associates work with very small numbers of plants and no "control" plants, i.e., plants in normal conditions for use as checks on his other plants, are used. The latter he considers unnecessary although regarded by scientists as standard practice throughout the scientific world. Usually large numbers of plants are used for experiment so that the results can be statistically analysed but this practise Lysenko deplores as "abiological." When the results of one of Lysenko's students were found to be incapable of standing up to the test of statistical analysis, Lysenko replied "we biologists do not want to submit to blind chance .... we maintain that biological regularities do not resemble mathematical laws."