Hermann Joseph Muller (or
H. J. Muller) (December 21 1890 – April 5 1967) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
geneticistA geneticist is a scientist who studies genetics, the science of heredity and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a researcher or lecturer...
, educator, and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of
radiationIn physics, radiation describes any process in which energy emitted by one body travels through a medium or through space, ultimately to be absorbed by another body...
(X-ray mutagenesis) as well as his outspoken political beliefs.
Early life
Muller was born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
and excelled in the public schools. As an adolescent, he attended a
UnitarianUnitarianism as a theology is the belief in the single personality of God, in contrast to the doctrine of the Trinity ....
church and considered himself a pantheist; in high school he became an atheist. At 16 he entered
Columbia CollegeColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
. From his first semester he was interested in biology; he became an early convert of the
MendelianMendelian inheritance is a set of primary tenets relating to the transmission of hereditary characteristics from parent organisms to their children; it underlies much of genetics. They were initially derived from the work of Gregor Mendel published in 1865 and 1866 which was "re-discovered" in...
-
chromosomeA chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein that is found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve to package the DNA and control its functions...
theory of heredity — and the concept of genetic
mutationIn biology, a mutation is a randomly derived change to the nucleotide sequence of the genetic material of an organism.Mutations can be caused by copying errors in the genetic material during cell division, or by exposure to mutagens , or can be induced by the organism itself, by cellular processes...
s and
natural selectionNatural selection is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations...
as the basis for
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
. He formed a Biology Club and also became a proponent of
eugenicsEugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. Widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century, after having become associated with the Holocaust, it has largely fallen into disrepute.- Overview :As a social movement...
; the connections between biology and society would be his perennial concern. Muller earned a
B.A.Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences or both....
degree in 1910.
Muller remained at Columbia (the pre-eminent American zoology program at the time, thanks to
E. B. WilsonEdmund Beecher Wilson was a pioneering American zoologist and geneticist.Wilson was born in Geneva, Illinois, and graduated from Yale in 1878. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins in 1881....
and his students) for graduate school. He became interested in the
DrosophilaDrosophila is a genus of small flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "fruit flies" or more appropriately pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species to linger around overripe or rotting fruit...
genetics work of
Thomas Hunt MorganThomas Hunt Morgan was an American geneticist and embryologist. Morgan received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 and researched embryology during his tenure at Bryn Mawr. Following the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance in 1900, Morgan's research moved to the study of mutation in...
's fly lab after undergraduate bottle washers
Alfred SturtevantAlfred Henry Sturtevant was an American geneticist. Sturtevant constructed the first genetic map of a chromosome in 1913. Throughout his career he worked on the organism Drosophila melanogaster with Thomas Hunt Morgan...
and
Calvin BridgesCalvin Blackman Bridges was an American scientist, known for his contributions to the field of genetics. Along with Alfred Sturtevant and H.J. Muller, Bridges was part of the famous fly room of Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University.Bridges wrote a masterful Ph.D...
joined his Biology Club. In 1911-1912, he studied metabolism at
Cornell UniversityCornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, that is a member of the Ivy League.Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni, 28 Rhodes Scholars and 41 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students...
, but remained involved with Columbia. He followed the drosophilists as the first genetic maps emerged from Morgan's experiments, and joined Morgan's group in 1912 (after two years of informal participation).
In the fly group, Muller's contributions were primarily theoretical: explanations for experimental results and ideas and predictions for new experiments. In the emerging collaborative culture of the drosophilists, however, credit was assigned based on results rather than ideas; Muller felt cheated when he was left out of major publications.
Career
In 1914,
Julian HuxleySir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...
offered Muller a position at the recently founded William Marsh Rice Institute, now
Rice UniversityWilliam Marsh Rice University is a private coeducational research university located in Houston, Texas, United States...
; he hurried to complete his
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
degree and moved to Houston for the beginning of the 1915-1916 academic year (his degree was issued in 1916). At Rice, Muller taught biology and continued
Drosophila lab work. In 1918, he proposed an explanation for the dramatic discontinuous alterations in
Oenothera larmarckiana that were the basis of
Hugo de VriesHugo Marie de Vries was a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists. He is known chiefly for suggesting the concept of genes, rediscovering the laws of heredity in the 1890s while unaware of Gregor Mendel's work, for introducing the term "mutation", and for developing a mutation theory of...
's
theory of
mutationismMutationism refers to the theory emphasizing mutation as a creative principle and source of discontinuity in evolutionary change, particularly associated with the founders of modern genetics....
: "balanced lethals" allowed the accumulation of recessive mutations, and rare
crossing overCrossing Over may refer to:* Chromosomal crossover, a cellular process* Crossing Over , a 1998 album by Hesperus* Crossing Over , a book by John Edward* Crossing Over , a 2009 film...
events resulted in the sudden expression of these hidden traits. In other words, de Vries's experiments were explainable by the Mendelian-chromosome theory. Muller's work was increasingly focused on
mutation rateIn genetics, the mutation rate is the chance of a mutation occurring in an organism or gene in each generation...
and lethal mutations. In 1918, Morgan—short-handed because many of his students and assistants were drafted for the U.S. entry into
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
—convinced Muller to return to Columbia to teach and to expand his experimental program.
At Columbia, Muller and his collaborator and longtime friend Edgar Altenburg continued the investigation of lethal mutations. The primary method for detecting such mutations was to measure the sex ratios of the offspring of female flies. They predicted the ratio would vary from 1:1 due to recessive mutations on the X chromosome, which would only be expressed in males (who lacked the functional allele on a second X chromosome). Muller found a strong temperature dependence in mutation rate, leading him to believe that spontaneous mutation was the dominant mode (and to initially discount the role of external factors such as ionizing radiation or chemical agents). In 1920, Muller and Altenburg coauthored a seminal paper in
GeneticsGenetics is a monthly scientific journal publishing investigations bearing on heredity, genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology. Genetics is published by the Genetics Society of America...
on "modifier genes" that determine the size of mutant
Drosophila wings. In 1919, Muller made the important discovery of a mutant (later found to be a
chromosomal inversionAn inversion is a chromosome rearrangement in which a segment of a chromosome is reversed end to end. An inversion occurs when a single chromosome undergoes breakage and rearrangement within itself. Inversions are of two types: paracentric and pericentric.Paracentric inversions do not include the...
) that appeared to suppress crossing-over, which opened up new avenues in mutation rate studies. However, his appointment at Columbia was not continued; he accepted an offer from the
University of TexasThe University of Texas at Austin is a public research university located in Austin, Texas, United States, and is the flagship institution of The University of Texas System. The main campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol...
and left Columbia after the summer of 1920.
Muller taught at
The University of TexasThe University of Texas at Austin is a public research university located in Austin, Texas, United States, and is the flagship institution of The University of Texas System. The main campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol...
from 1920 until 1932. Soon after returning to Texas, he married mathematics professor Jesse Marie Jacobs, whom he had courted previously. In his early years at Texas, Muller's
Drosophila work was slow going; the data from his mutation rate studies were difficult to interpret. In 1923, he began using
radiumRadium is a radioactive chemical element which has the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. Its appearance is almost pure white, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, turning black. Radium is an alkaline earth metal that is found in trace amounts in uranium ores. It is extremely radioactive...
and X-rays, but the relationship between radiation and mutation was difficult to measure because such radiation also sterilized the flies. In this period, he became more involved with eugenics and human genetics. He carried out a study of twins separated at birth that seemed to indicate a strong hereditary component to I.Q. Muller was critical of the new directions of the eugenics movement (such as anti-immigration), but was hopeful about the prospects for positive eugenics.
Discovery of X-ray mutagenesis
1926 marked the beginning of a series of major breakthroughs. Beginning in November, Muller carried out two experiments with varied doses of X-rays, the second of which used the crossing over suppressor stock ("ClB") he had found in 1919. A clear, quantitative connection between radiation and lethal mutations quickly emerged. Muller's discovery created a media sensation after he delivered a paper entitled "The Problem of Genetic Modification" at the Fifth International Congress of Genetics in
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
; it would make him one of the better known public intellectuals of the early 20th century. By 1928, others had replicated his dramatic results, expanding them to other
model organismA model organism is a species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the organism model will provide insight into the workings of other organisms...
s such as
waspThe term wasp is typically defined as any insect of the order Hymenoptera and suborder Apocrita that is neither a bee nor ant. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitizes it, making wasps critically important in natural control of their numbers,...
s and
maizeMaize , is a herbaceous plant domesticated in Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents...
. In the following years, he began publicizing the likely dangers of radiation exposure in humans (such as physicians who frequently operate X-ray equipment).
His lab grew quickly, but it shrunk again following the onset of the
Great DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Especially after the stock market crash, Muller was increasingly pessimistic about the prospects of
capitalismCapitalism is an economic and social system in which the means of production are privately controlled; labor, goods and capital are traded in a market; profits are distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries; and wages are paid to labor...
. Some of his visiting lab members were from the USSR, and he helped edit and distribute an illegal leftist student newspaper,
The Spark. It was a difficult period for Muller both scientifically and personally: his marriage was falling apart, and he was increasingly dissatisfied with his life in Texas. Meanwhile, the waning of the eugenics movement, ironically hastened by his own work pointing to the previously ignored connections between environment and genetics, meant that his ideas on the future of human evolution had reduced impact in the public sphere.
Work in Europe
In September 1932, Muller moved to
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
to work with the Russian expatriate geneticist
Nikolay Timofeeff-RessovskyNikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij was a Soviet biologist. He conducted research in radiation genetics, experimental population genetics, and microevolution...
; a trip intended as a limited sabbatical stretched into an eight year, five country journey. In Berlin, he met two physicists who would later be significant to the biology community:
Niels BohrNiels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in...
and
Max DelbrückMax Ludwig Henning Delbrück was a German-American biophysicist and Nobel laureate.-Biography:Delbrück was born in Berlin, German Empire...
. The Nazi movement was precipitating the rapid emigration of scientific talent from Germany, and Muller was particularly opposed to the politics of National Socialism. But the FBI was investigating Muller because of his involvement with
The Spark, so he chose instead to go to the Soviet Union (an environment better suited to his political beliefs). In 1933, Muller and his wife reconciled, and she and their son David E. Muller moved with Hermann to
LeningradLeningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:Places:* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...
. There, at the Institute of Genetics, he imported the basic equipment for a
Drosophila lab—including the flies—and set up shop. The Institute was moved to
MoscowMoscow is the capital and the largest city of Russia. It is also the largest metropolitan area in Europe, and ranks among the largest urban areas in the world. Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world, a...
in 1934, and Muller and his wife were divorced in 1935.
In the USSR, Muller supervised a large and productive lab, and organized work on medical genetics. Most of his work involved further explorations of genetics and radiation. There he completed his eugenics book,
Out of the Night. By 1936, however, Stalin's repressive policies and the rise of
LysenkoismLysenkoism was a set of repressive political and social campaigns in science and agriculture by the powerful Stalinist director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko and his followers, which began in the late 1920s and formally ended in...
was making the USSR an increasingly problematic place to live and work. Muller and much of the Russian genetics community did what they could to oppose
Trofim LysenkoTrofim Denisovich Lysenko was a Ukrainian agronomist who was director of Soviet biology under Joseph Stalin...
and his
LarmarckianLamarckism is the once popularly accepted, but since mainly discredited, idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring...
evolutionary theory, but Muller was soon forced to leave the Soviet Union after Stalin read a translation of his eugenics book and was "displeased by it, and...ordered an attack prepared against it."
Muller—with about 250 strains of
Drosophila—moved to
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
in September 1937, after a brief stay in
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its metropolitan area is the third-most populous city by urban area in the European Union after Paris and London.The city is located on the river...
and
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. In 1938, with war on the horizon, he began looking for a permanent position back in the United States. He also began courting Dorothea "Thea" Kantorowicz, a German refugee; they were married in May 1939. The Seventh International Congress on Genetics was held in Edinburgh later that year; Muller wrote a "Geneticists' Manifesto" in response to the question: "How could the world's population be improved most effectively genetically?" He also engaged in a debate with the perennial genetics gadfly
Richard GoldschmidtRichard Benedict Goldschmidt was a German-born American geneticist. He is considered the first to integrate genetics, development, and evolution . He pioneered understanding of reaction norms, genetic assimilation, dynamical genetics, sex determination, and heterochrony...
over the existence of the gene, for which there remained little direct physical evidence.
Later career
When Muller returned to the United States in 1940, he took an untenured research position at
Amherst CollegeAmherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1821, it is the third oldest college in Massachusetts, and has been coeducational since 1975...
, in the department of Otto Glaser. After the U.S. entry into
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, his position was extended indefinitely and expanded to include teaching. His
Drosophila work in this period focused on measuring the rate of spontaneous (as opposed to radiation-induced) mutations. Muller's publication rate decreased significantly in this period, from a combination of lack of lab workers and experimentally challenging projects. However, he also worked as an adviser to the
Manhattan ProjectThe Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb. The project was led by the United States, and included scientists from Denmark, The United Kingdom and Canada...
(though he did not know that was what it was), as well as a study of the mutational effects of
radarRadar is an object detection system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The term RADAR was coined in 1941 as an acronym for RAdio Detection And...
. Muller's appointment was ended after the 1944-1945 academic year, and despite difficulties stemming from his socialist political activities, he found a position as professor of zoology at Indiana University.
In 1946, Muller was awarded the 1946
Nobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded once a year by the Swedish Karolinska Institute. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Physiology or Medicine...
, "for the discovery that mutations can be induced by x-rays". Genetics, and especially the physical and physiological nature of the gene, was becoming a central topic in biology, and x-ray mutagenesis was a key to many recent advances—among them, George Beadle and Edward Tatum's work on
NeurosporaNeurospora is a genus of Ascomycete fungi. The genus name, meaning "nerve spore" refers to the characteristic striations on the spores that resemble axons.The best known species in this genus is Neurospora crassa, a common model organism in biology...
that established the
one gene-one enzyme hypothesisThe one gene-one enzyme hypothesis is the idea that genes act through the production of enzymes, with each gene responsible for producing a single enzyme that in turn effects a single step in a metabolic pathway...
.
The Nobel Prize, in the wake of the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and NagasakiThe atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the executive order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively...
, focused public attention on a subject Muller had been publicizing for two decades: the dangers of radiation. In 1952,
nuclear falloutFallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion, aptly named because it "falls out" of the atmosphere into which it is spread during the explosion. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust created when a nuclear weapon explodes. This radioactive dust, consisting of hot...
became a public issue; since
Operation CrossroadsOperation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946. Its purpose was to test the effect of nuclear weapons on naval ships...
, more and more evidence had been leaking out about
radiation sicknessRadiation Sickness is a VHS by the thrash metal band Nuclear Assault. The video is a recording of a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, London in 1988. It was released in 1991...
and death caused by
nuclear testingNuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the twentieth century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons have tested them...
, and Muller was one of the foremost experts. Muller—and many other scientists—pursued an array of political activities to defuse the threat of
nuclear warNuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weapons are used. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare is vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
. With the
Castle BravoCastle Bravo was the code name given to the first U.S. test of a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device, detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, by the United States, as the first test of Operation Castle...
fallout controversy in 1954, the issue became even more urgent. In 1955 Muller was one of eleven prominent intellectuals to sign the
Russell-Einstein ManifestoThe Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on July 9, 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict...
, the upshot of which was the first
Pugwash Conference on Science and World AffairsThe Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs is an international organization that brings together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the danger of armed conflict and to seek solutions to global security threats...
in 1957.
He was awarded the
Linnean Society of LondonThe Linnean Society of London is the world's premier society for the study and dissemination of taxonomy and natural history. It publishes a Zoological Journal, as well as Botanical and Biological Journals...
's prestigious
Darwin-Wallace MedalThe Darwin-Wallace Medal is a medal awarded by the Linnean Society of London every 50 years, beginning in 1908, 50 years after the joint presentation by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of two scientific papers - On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of...
in 1958.
H. J. Muller and science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin were second cousins; their great grandfather Nicholas Müller immigrated to the United States in 1848.
Personal life
Muller is survived by his daughter, Helen J. Muller, now an Emeritus professor at the University of New Mexico. His son,David E. Muller, an Emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois and at New Mexico State University, died in 2008 in Las Cruces, NM. Dorothea Kantorowicz Muller was Helen Muller's mother, and Jessie Jacobs Muller was David Muller's mother. David E. Muller is the inventor of the Muller C-element, a device used to implement asynchronous circuitry in electronic computers.
Former graduate students
- H. Bentley Glass
Hiram Bentley Glass was an American geneticist and noted columnist. Born in China to missionary parents, he attended college at Baylor University in Texas. He then furthered his education at the University of Texas, where he received his Ph.D. degree under the mentorship of geneticist Hermann...
- C.P. Oliver
- Wilson Stone
Wilson Stuart Stone was an American geneticist and Zoologist. Dr. Stone received his bachelor, Masters and PhD at the University of Texas and joined the department of zoology in 1932. Dr. Stone mentors were J.T. Patterson, H.J. Muller, and Theophilus Painter. Dr...
- Elof Axel Carlson
Elof Axel Carlson is distinguished teaching professor emeritus at State University of New York at Stony Brook, as well as a American geneticist and noted historian of Science. Dr. Carlson earned his B.A. 1953 from New York University, and his PhD 1958 in zoology from Indiana University under the...
- Seymour Abrahamson
- William Edgar Trout III
- Dale Eugene Wagoner
- Sara Helen Frye
- Abraham P. Schalet
- Irwin I. Oster
Former post-doctoral fellows
Worked in lab as undergraduates
- Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences...
- Margaret Edmondson
List of Personnel who worked in his lab in Indiana
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subfile/mullerindiana.html
See also
- Muller's ratchet
In evolutionary genetics, Muller's ratchet is the process by which the genomes of an asexual population accumulate deleterious mutations in an irreversible manner....
- Muller's morphs
1946 Nobel Prize winner Hermann J. Muller coined the terms amorph, hypomorph, hypermorph, antimorph and neomorph to classify mutations based on their behaviour in various genetic situations. These classifications are still widely used in Drosophila genetics to describe mutations...
- History of biology
The history of biology traces the study of the living world from ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back to ancient Egyptian medicine...
- History of genetics
The history of genetics is generally held to have started with the work of an Augustinian friar, Gregor Mendel. His work on pea plants, published in 1866, described what came to be known as Mendelian Inheritance. In the centuries before—and for several decades after—Mendel's work, a...
- History of model organisms
The history of model organisms began with the idea that certain organisms can be studied and used to gain knowledge of other organisms or as a control for other organisms of the same species. Model organisms offer standards that serve as the authorized basis for comparison of other organisms...
External links