The Forgotten Father of Epigenetics

1988

Reflecting on embryology in the 1930s, Johannes Holtfreter stated: We managed more or less successfully to keep our work undisturbed by humanity's strife and struggle around us and proceeded to study the plants and animals, and particularly, the secrets of amphibian development. Here, at least, in the realm of undespoiled Nature, everything seemed peaceful and in perfect order. It was from our growing intimacy with the inner harmony, the meaningfulness, the integration, and the interdependence of the structures and functions as we observed them in dumb creatures that we derived our own philosophy of life. It has served us well in this continuously troublesome world.' The attempts to reintegrate embryology and genetics during the last years of the 1930s represent the last chapter in the emergence of American biology. When had American biology finished "emerging"? I suspect that stage was reached when it had successfully resisted the last attempts to reintegrate it into European-dominated traditions of inquiry. For genetics, this occurred in the late 1930s when Richard B. Goldschmidt and Ernest Everett Just separately countered the American school of genetics with European alternatives. Goldschmidt and Just both attempted to place genetics into a physiological framework. Goldschmidt was the director of the genetics section of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute before fleeing the Nazis and coming to America in 1936. For Goldschmidt, the "static genetics" of Τ. H. Morgan, centered on individual particulate genes, was to be replaced by "physiological genetics" wherein the gene did not exist as an individual unit, and its activity, not its location, was the focus of research.

The American Development of Biology, 1988

Reflecting on embryology in the 1930s, Johannes Holtfreter stated: We managed more or less successfully to keep our work undisturbed by humanity's strife and struggle around us and proceeded to study the plants and animals, and particularly, the secrets of amphibian development. Here, at least, in the realm of undespoiled Nature, everything seemed peaceful and in perfect order. It was from our growing intimacy with the inner harmony, the meaningfulness, the integration, and the interdependence of the structures and functions as we observed them in dumb creatures that we derived our own philosophy of life. It has served us well in this continuously troublesome world.' The attempts to reintegrate embryology and genetics during the last years of the 1930s represent the last chapter in the emergence of American biology. When had American biology finished "emerging"? I suspect that stage was reached when it had successfully resisted the last attempts to reintegrate it into European-dominated traditions of inquiry. For genetics, this occurred in the late 1930s when Richard B. Goldschmidt and Ernest Everett Just separately countered the American school of genetics with European alternatives. Goldschmidt and Just both attempted to place genetics into a physiological framework. Goldschmidt was the director of the genetics section of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute before fleeing the Nazis and coming to America in 1936. For Goldschmidt, the "static genetics" of Τ. H. Morgan, centered on individual particulate genes, was to be replaced by "physiological genetics" wherein the gene did not exist as an individual unit, and its activity, not its location, was the focus of research.

Molecular Reproduction and Development, 2009

Ernest E. Just (1883-1941) is best known for his discovery of the "wave of negativity" that sweeps of the sea urchin egg during fertilization, and his elucidation of what are known as the fast and slow blocks to polyspermy. Just's contemporary Johannes Holtfreter (1901-1992) is known for his pioneering work in amphibian morphogenesis, which helped to lay the foundation for modern vertebrate developmental biology. This paper, after briefly describing the life and scientific contributions of Just, argues that his work and ideas strongly influenced two of the concepts for which Holtfreter is best known: tissue affinity and autoneuralization (or autoinduction). Specifically, this paper argues that, first, Just's experiments demonstrating developmental stage-specific changes in the adhesiveness of the blastomeres of cleavage embryos helped lay the foundation for Holtfreter's concept of tissue affinity and, second, Just's notion of the intrinsic irritability of the egg cell, which is evident in experimental parthenogenesis, strongly informed Holtfreter's concept of the nonspecific induction of neural tissue formation in amphibian gastrula ectoderm explants, a phenomenon known as auto-induction. Acknowledgment of these contributions by Just in no way diminishes the importance of Holtfreter's groundbreaking work. It does, however, extend the impact of Just's work into the area of embryo morphogenesis. It connects Just to Holtfreter and positions his work as an antecedent to embryo research that continues to this day.

Briefings in Functional Genomics, 2010

Endeavour, 2001

Many historians have assumed that the advent of the chromosome theory of heredity and the theory of the gene settled the old debate over preformation versus epigenesis in favour of preformation. An analysis of the views of leading British cytologists between 1900 and 1920 indicates that the story is more complex. Cytologists could accept seemingly preformationist tenets about the hereditary factors and yet maintain an overall epigenetic view of organism development by assuming that genes interact dynamically with the cytoplasm and that the cell is influenced by its environment throughout growth and development.

2014

For more than 40 years, the work of Ernest Everett Just (1883– 1941) (Fig. 1), an African American embryologist known for his pioneering studies of fertilization and early development in marine invertebrates, lay buried in the scientific literature, largely forgotten and invisible to the world of biology. Then, in 1983, Kenneth R. Manning, a historian of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote a biography of Just, Black Apollo of Science (Manning, '83), that garnered attention for both author and subject. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a favorable review of Manning's book (Gould, '88 [083]), and provided some reflections of his own about Just in a column in Natural History magazine (Gould, '85). Scott Gilbert, in the inaugural edition of his popular textbook Developmental Biology, cited Just (Gilbert, '85); this was likely the first technical citation of Just's work since the early ABSTRACT Ernest Everett Just (1883–1941) was an African American ...

2014

The origin of epigenetics has been traditionally traced back to Conrad Hal Waddington's foundational work in 1940s. The aim of the present paper is to reveal a hidden history of epigenetics, by means of a multicenter approach. Our analysis shows that genetics and embryology in early XX century--far from being non-communicating vessels--shared similar questions, as epitomized by Thomas Hunt Morgan's works. Such questions were rooted in the theory of epigenesis and set the scene for the development of epigenetics. Since the 1950s, the contribution of key scientists (Mary Lyon and Eduardo Scarano), as well as the discussions at the international conference of Gif-sur-Yvette (1957) paved the way for three fundamental shifts of focus: 1. From the whole embryo to the gene; 2. From the gene to the complex extranuclear processes of development; 3. From cytoplasmic inheritance to the epigenetics mechanisms.

Developmental biology (New …, 1991

I. Introduction: an epigenetic revolution? "Today we are learning the language in which God created life", President Clinton dramatically declared on June 26, 2000, after scientists have announced the completion an 85% draft of the human genetic code. 1 Today, about a decade after the completion of the Human Genome Project, most scientist would agree that the main results of this project was not the revelation of the ultimate 'code of life', 2 but almost the opposite: namely the realization that the road to the understanding of most life phenomena is not that of the DNA itself. Instead, a totally new research field has emerged, dedicated to the study of endlessly complicated web of interactions between the genetic material and its environment much of which is subsumed under the heading of 'epigenetics'. Currently, there seems to be little need to explain or argue for the importance of epigenetic inheritance. Not only professional scientists, but also the general public is overwhelmed by articles and books about what is described by some as the "Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance" 3 , by others as the "Second Code". 4 Epigenetics is "the new discipline that is revolutionizing biology", so a recent book on the subject; 1 From White House press conference broadcast on the day of the publication of the first draft of the human genome.

Hist. and Phil. of the Life Sciences

This is an introduction to a collection of articles on the conceptual history of epigenesis, from Aristotle to Harvey, Cavendish, Kant and Erasmus Darwin, moving into nineteenth-century biology with Wolff, Blumenbach and His, and onto the twentieth century and current issues, with Waddington and epigenetics. The purpose of the topical collection is to emphasize how epigenesis marks the point of intersection of a theory of biological development and a (philosophical) theory of active matter. We also wish to show that the concept of epigenesis existed prior to biological theorization and that it continues to permeate thinking about development in recent biological debates