GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

INTRODUCTION
What is animal breeding?
■ The application of the principles of animal genetics with the goal to genetically improve
desirable and heritable qualities in the next generation
■ “Artificial Selection”
■ The use of males and females for breeding only if they passed certain quality criteria
■ Aims to improve the quantity, quality, efficiency, and aesthetic value of domestic animals and
their products
What is animal breeding?
Animal breeding is about selective breeding: only use males and females for breeding that have
passed a certain quality criterion.And with a predefined goal in mind: to genetically improve the
population in a certain direction.So people plan with the intention to select the best animals
according to a predefined list of requisites (traits) and use those selected animals for breeding the
next generation so that the offspring on average will be better than the parents.In other words:
selective breeding causes a shift in population average from one generation to the next.
The application of the principles of animal genetics with the goal of improvement of animals•Study
of genetic differences among animals•aims to improve the quantity, efficiency, quality, and
aesthetic value of farm animals and their products•*

IN THE TRUE SENSE: Reproduction alone is not animal breeding.

Reproduction alone is not animal breeding.
Although at first instance you may think that animal breeding involves keeping animals and making
sure they reproduce, and it thus would involve optimizing reproduction techniques or something
along those lines, this is not the case.

Goals of animal breeding

■ To find out through performance records what we have genetically
■ To raise the potential of productive efficiency by making better combinations of genetic material

What is animal Genetics?

Refers to the study of the principles of inheritance in animals

Brief history of Genetics

■ Pre-Mendelian
■ Mendel
■ Post-Mendelian

PRE MENDELIAN-GENETICS
■ Hippocrates
• Similar to pangenesis theory of Charles Darwin
• States that hereditary material is collected throughout the body
■ Aristotle
• Suggested that the nonphysical, form-giving principle of an organism was transmitted
through semen (purified form of blood) and the mother’s menstrual blood
GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

*The most influential early theories of heredity were that of Hippocrates and Aristotle.
■ Anaxagoras
• Pre-Formation Theory
• Assumed that the entire organism was ‘preformed’ (known as homunculus) in the
sperm or in the egg
• It only had to unfold and grow in the womb
■ 18th century
• Increased knowledge on plant and animal diversity led to increased focus on taxonomy
• Carl Linnaeus and others conducted experiments on hybridization (esp. hybrids between
species)
HYBRIDS
■ Wholphin = false killer whale + bottlenose dolphin
■ Beefalo = American bison + domestic cow
■ Mule = male donkey + female horse
■ Hinny = male horse + female donkey
■ Bengal cat = leopard cat + domestic cat
■ Liger = male lion + female tiger
■ Tigon/Tiglon = male tiger + female lion
■ Zeedonk = zebra/donkey

■ Blending Inheritance
• Suggested that each parent contributed fluids to the fertilization process
• Traits of parents are blended and mixed to produce offspring
■ Blending Inheritance
• Suggested that each parent contributed fluids to the fertilization process
• Traits of parents are blended and mixed to produce offspring
*Like how red and yellow produces orange or blue and yellow produces green
■ Early 19th century
• Augustin Sageret established the concept of ‘dominance’
• When some plant varieties are crossed, certain characteristics present in one parent
usually appear in the offspring
• Some ancestral characteristics found in neither parent may also appear in offspring
****recognizing that when some plant varieties are crossed, certain characteristics (present in one
parent) usually appear in the offspring; he also found that some ancestral characteristics found in
neither parent may appear in offspring.
However, plant breeders made little attempt to establish a theoretical foundation for their work or to
share their knowledge with current work of physiology

MENDELIAN GENETICS
■ Refers to early studies on the behavior or mode of transmission of the units of heredity
GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

■ Based on the work of Gregor Johann Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel
■ Austrian friar (monk)
■ Founder of Genetics
■ Conducted experiments on pea plants (Pisum sativum) to establish the many laws of heredity
(1856-1863)
■ Worked on seven traits (plant height, pod shape, pod color, seed shape, seed color, flower
position, flower color)
■ Published his work in 1866
■ Most of his work was not recognized until the 1900s where different scientists independently
rediscovered/verified his findings
■ Erich von Tschermak (Austrian)
■ Hugo Marie de Vries (Dutch)
■ Carl Erich Correns (German)
■ William Jasper Spillman (American)
******Mendel's results were largely ignored by the vast majority.

Although they were not completely unknown to biologists of the time, they were not seen as generally
applicable, even by Mendel himself, who thought they only applied to certain categories of species or
traits
De Vries published first on the subject, mentioning Mendel in a footnote, while Correns pointed out
Mendel's priority after having read De Vries' paper and realizing that he himself did not have priority. De
Vries may not have acknowledged truthfully how much of his knowledge of the laws came from his own
work and how much came only after reading Mendel's paper. Later scholars have accused Von
Tschermak of not truly understanding the results at all

Through his experiments with pea plants, Mendel saw that genotypes and phenotypes of progeny
were predictable and that some traits were dominant over others
These patterns demonstrated the usefulness of applying statistics to inheritance
Mendel used the term ‘factor’ to designate the material creating ‘character’ or traits (later on to be
described as the gene)

POST MENDELIAN GENETICS

■ Charles Darwin
• Pangenesis
• Every part of the body emits tiny particles (gemmules) which migrate to the gonads
• Contribute to the fertilized egg and so to the next generation
• Changes to the body during an organism’s life would be inherited
****Mendel's work was published in a relatively obscure scientific journal, and it was not given any
attention in the scientific community.

Instead, discussions about modes of heredity were galvanized by Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural
selection, in which mechanisms of non-Lamarckian heredity seemed to be required
GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

■ August Weismann
– Germ Plasm Theory (1883)
– Hereditary material (germ plasm) is confined to the gonads
– Somatic cells develop afresh in each generation from the germ plasm
– Hereditary information was carried only in sperm and egg cells
****In 1883 August Weismann conducted experiments involving breeding mice whose tails had been
surgically removed.

His results — that surgically removing a mouse's tail had no effect on the tail of its offspring —
challenged the theories of pangenesis and Lamarckism, which held that changes to an organism during
its lifetime could be inherited by its descendants. Weismann proposed the germ plasm theory of
inheritance, which held that hereditary information was carried only in sperm and egg cells.

Brief Timeline of Events

■ 1856-1863 – Mendel studied inheritance traits in pea plants

■ 1866 – Mendel publishes Experiments on Plant Hybridization
■ 1869 – Friedrich Miescher discovers ‘nuclein’ in the nucleus of WBC in pus of discarded surgical
bandages (what we know now as DNA)
■ 1889 – Hugo de Vries postulates that inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in
particles, calling them ‘pangenes’
■ 1903 – Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri independently hypothesize that chromosomes are
hereditary units
■ 1905 – Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen introduces the term ‘gene’
■ 1905 – William Bateson coins the term ‘genetics’
■ 1908 – Godfrey Harold Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg proposed the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium
Model which describes the frequencies of genes of a population is constant and at a state of
equilibrium unless specific disturbing influences are introduced
■ 1910 – Thomas Hunt Morgan shows that genes reside in chromosomes

Main Areas of Study and Application of Animal Genetics

■ Mendelian Genetics
■ Population Genetics
■ Quantitative Genetics
*Mendelian Genetics
Little direct importance in animal improvement but it is the basis of the two other areas

Population Genetics
■ Study of Mendelian Genetics in populations of plants and animals
■ Limited to the inheritance of qualitative traits
■ Studies why characteristics become either fixed or continue to exhibit variation in populations
GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

Quantitative Genetics
■ Study of inheritance of quantitative traits
■ Conceptually, the most difficult among the three areas
■ Based on the hypothesis that genes contribute to expression of quantitative traits like milk yield,
growth rate, and litter size
GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

NOTABLE PERSON IN GENETICS

Albrecht Kossel
■ German biochemist
■ Ludwig Karl Martin Leonhard Albrecht Kossel
■ Isolated and described the five organic compounds in nucleic acids: Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine,
Thymine, and Uracil in 1881
■ Also credited for naming DNA
■ Won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1910

Walther Flemming
■ German biologist
■ Founder of Cytogenetics
■ Identified that ‘chromatin’ was correlated to threadlike structures in the cell nucleus, the
‘chromosomes’
■ Discovered the process of mitosis
■ Was unaware of Mendel’s work on heredity
■ Did not make the connection between his observations and genetic inheritance

******Two decades would pass before the significance of Flemming's work was truly realized with the
rediscovery of Mendel's rules.

Flemming's discovery of mitosis and chromosomes as one of the 100 most important scientific
discoveries of all time, and one of the 10 most important discoveries in cell biology

August Friedrich Leopold Weismann

■ German evolutionary biologist
■ Second most notable evolutionary biologist next to Charles Darwin
■ Introduced the Germ Plasm Theory in 1892
■ Stated that heritable information is only transmitted by germ cells, and not by somatic cells
■ It also relates that information cannot be passed from the somatic cells to the germ cells

Hugo Marie de Vries

■ Dutch geneticist
■ One of the four scientists to independently rediscover the works of Gregor Mendel in 1890
■ Unaware of Mendel’s work, he used the laws of dominance and recessiveness, segregation, and
independent assortment to explain the 3:1 ratio of phenotypes in the second generation
■ Confirms that inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in particles/units, which he
termed ‘pangenes’

Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen

■ Danish geneticist
■ Coined the terms ‘gene’, ‘genotype’, and ‘phenotype’ in 1892
GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

■ Genotype
• Set of heritable genes passed down from parents to offspring
■ Phenotype
• Pheno meaning “showing”
• Observable characteristics or traits
*********Genotype

an organism’s set of heritable genes that can be passed down from parents to offspring
Phenotype
The term covers the organism’s morphology or physical form and structure,
its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products
of behavior.
An organism's phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism's genetic code,
or its genotype, and the influence of environmental factors

Carl Erich Correns

■ German geneticist
■ One of the four scientists to independently rediscover the works of Gregor Mendel in 1900
■ Restated Mendel’s results as the ‘Law of Segregation’ and introduced a new law, the ‘Law of
Independent Assortment’

Walter Sutton
■ American geneticist
■ Identified the chromosomes as the carriers of genetic material in 1903
■ Chromosomes, present in all dividing cells, are passed from one generation to the next and are
the basis for all genetic inheritance
■ Genes are located in chromosomes
****Sutton's work with grasshoppers showed that chromosomes occur in matched pairs of maternal
and paternal chromosomes which separate during meiosis and "may constitute the physical basis of the
Mendelian law of heredity"

Theodor Boveri
■ German zoologist
■ Co-founder of modern cytology
■ Identified the chromosomes as the carriers of genetic material
■ His work with sea urchins showed that it was necessary for all chromosomes to be present in
order for embryonic development to take place
William Bateson
■ English biologist
■ First person to use the term ‘genetics’ to describe the study of heredity
■ First suggested the term to be used in a personal letter to Adam Sedgwick in April 1905
■ First used the term publicly at the Third International Conference on Plant Hybridization in 1906

Thomas Hunt Morgan

■ American geneticist
GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

■ Famous for his experimental research in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster)

■ Established the chromosome theory of heredity (1911)
■ Genes are linked in a series on chromosomes and are responsible for identifiable, hereditary
traits
■ Won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1933

Oswald Avery, Jr.

■ Canadian-American physician
■ Outlined DNA as the transforming principle in 1944
■ Along with Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty discovered that DNA is responsible for the
transformation of the physical characteristics of bacteria, not proteins

Barbara McClintock
■ American cytogeneticist
■ Discovered the mobility of genes in 1948
■ ‘Jumping Genes’
■ Genes can move on a chromosome
■ Won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1983

Rosalind Franklin
■ English chemist and x-ray crystallographer
■ Best known for her work on x-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51 (1952)
■ Photo 51 led to the discovery of the DNA double helix
■ Died at 1958 due to ovarian cancer
■ Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in
Physiology/Medicine in 1962
*******Photo 51 is an X-ray diffraction image of a paracrystalline gel composed of DNA fiber taken
by Raymond Gosling, a graduate student working under the supervision of Rosalind Franklin in May 1952

James Watson was shown the photo by his collaborator, Maurice Wilkins, as Raymond Gosling, the
author of the picture, had returned under his supervision.
Rosalind Franklin did not know this at the time because she was leaving King's College London.
Randall, the head of the group, had asked Gosling to share all his data with Wilkins.
Along with Francis Crick, Watson used characteristics and features of Photo 51, together with evidence
from multiple other sources, to develop the chemical model of the DNA molecule.
Their model, and manuscripts by Wilkins and colleagues, and Gosling and Franklin, were first published,
together, in 1953, in the same issue of Nature.
In 1962, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins.
The prize was not awarded to Franklin; she had died four years earlier, and although there was not yet a
rule against posthumous awards, the Nobel Committee generally does not make posthumous
nominations.
Likewise, Gosling's work was not cited by the prize committee.

James Watson and Francis Crick

GENETICS WEEK 1 INTRO AND NOTABLE PERSONS

■ American and English molecular biologists

■ Discovered the double helix structure of DNA in 1953
■ Crick also proposed the ‘Central Dogma’ – the process by which the instructions in DNA are
converted into a functional product – in 1958

NOTABLE PEOPLE IN ANIMAL BREEDING

Robert Bakewell
■ British agriculturist
■ Father of Animal Breeding
■ First to implement selective breeding in livestock
■ Developed Shire horses, Old Longhorn cattle, and Leicester sheep
■ “Like Begets Like” (superior parents were more likely to produce superior progeny)
■ Suggested to “breed the best to best”
Jay Laurence Lush
■ American breeder
■ Father of Modern Animal Breeding
■ “Like does not always begets like”
■ Progeny of the best parents may be inferior to some progeny of the worst parents because of
chance
■ Suggested to “breed the best to best and hope for the best”