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Biographical Memoirs Volume 73 (1998) / Chapter Skim
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ALFRED HENRY STURTEVANT
Pages 348-363

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From page 349...
... later president of Illinois College. Sturtevant's father taught mathematics for a time at Illinois College but subsequently turner!
From page 350...
... submit it to Thomas Hunt Morgan, who hell! the chair of experimental zoology at Columbia en c!
From page 351...
... shorter periods when he hell! visiting professorships at a number of American universities.
From page 352...
... Sturtevant's discoveries of the principle of gene mapping, of the first reparable gene defect, of the principle underlying fate mapping, of the phenomena of unequal crossing-over, en c! of position effect were perhaps his greatest scientific achievements.
From page 353...
... a crucial test of the principles of mapping genes by constructing crosses in which all three genes were segregating simultaneously. In the progeny of such "three-factor" crosses, Sturtevant cliscoverec!
From page 354...
... be shown to be genetically vermilion. Evidently, vermilion eye tissue lacked some substance that could be supplied by genetically nonvermilion tissue from another portion of the belly.
From page 355...
... What hac! first been a disturbing exception to the generality of Sturtevant's principles of chromosome mapping became, in his hands, another demonstration of their vaTiclity.
From page 356...
... out, however. Moreover, spontaneous mutants were too rare, for the most part, to permit practical study of specific genes, except in the case of Bar.
From page 357...
... ~ ~ acute. dine extremely close similarity of these chains at the molecular level strongly implies that the genes cletermining them all arose from a single ancestral gene, presumably by repeater!
From page 358...
... Thus, in bacteria the chromosome consists of a series of gene clusters, or operons, that are examples par excellence of the position-effect phenomenon, in the sense that the order of the genes in an operon, as Fran~cois Jacob en c! Jacques Monoc!
From page 359...
... Many of the puzzling and bizarre "mutations" that Hugo de Vries and others had found in this organism remained disturbing thorns in the side of established genetic theory until Sturtevant and Emerson provided a detailed demonstration that they were not genuine mutations but, rather, the expected segregation products from the complex transiocations of chromosome arms that are peculiar to, and widespread in, Oenothera. Sturtevant and Dobzhansky collaborated in studying the plethora of inversions that occur in wild strains of many species of Drosophita, especially pseudoobscura.
From page 360...
... that the major chromosome arms of this organism tent! to remain intact throughout the speciation process, although the specific order of genes within an arm graclually becomes scramblecI, eviclently by successive fixations of inversions.
From page 361...
... was an account of his discovery of a remarkable mutant gene that was without any obvious effect on the fly by itself but that, in combination with another specific mutant gene Determining a prune-colorec!
From page 362...
... Background material can be found in Sturtevant's A History of Genetics and his articles "Thomas Hunt Morgan," in Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, 33 (1959) , 283-325; and "The Early Mendelians,' in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 109 (1965)


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