Flegr J. 2002. Was Lysenko (partly) right? Michurinist biology in the view of modern plant physiology and genetics. Riv.Biol./B. Forum 95: 259-272.
[ISSN0035-6050] IF 0.375
Abstract:
Soviet Lysenkoism was the darkest period of modern science, and its main product
- Michurinist biology - was a collection of absurd theories usually based on
anecdotal observations or on a few badly designed experiments without proper
controls and without any statistical evaluation of results. However, in the
thirties and early forties, Lysenkoists also described (and misinterpreted)
some interesting data and observations which could have been real and which
might inspire modern biologists to construct testable hypotheses and suggest
experiments that could extend our scientific knowledge. Here, I attempt to present
an explanation in terms Of modern biology of some of those phenomena, namely
vegetative hybridization, wobbled heritability, heritability of environmentally
induced adaptive modifications and effects of intravariety hybridization of
self-fertilizing cultivars. The first two phenomena can be explained on the
basis of visualization of hidden genetic and epigenetic polymorphism (originating
from somatic mutations, somatic recombination and paramutations), the third
phenomenon by the occurrence of intraindividual selection of somatic cell lines,
and the fourth phenomenon by low heritability of phenotypic properties (and
therefore also low capability to evolve) of outcrossing organisms (in comparison
with self-fertilizing or asexual organisms), i.e., by a theory of frozen plasticity.
Author Keywords:
heritability, Lysenko, punctuated equilibrium, somatic mutations, directed mutations,
Sir Sebright's effect, frozen plasticity, evolution
KeyWords Plus:
NATURAL-SELECTION, BETA-THALASSEMIA, CANALIZATION, POPULATIONS, SPECIATION,
VARIANCE, TRAITS, GENES, ALPHA