PMID: 11623812Oct 20, 2001Paper

"The real point is control": the reception of Barbara McClintock's controlling elements

Journal of the History of Biology
N C Comfort

Abstract

In the standard narrative of her life, Barbara McClintock discovered genetic transposition in the 1940s but no one believed her. She was ignored until molecular biologists of the 1970s "rediscovered" transposition and vindicated her heretical discovery. New archival documents, as well as interviews and close reading of published papers, belie this narrative. Transposition was accepted immediately by both maize and bacterial geneticists. Maize geneticists confirmed it repeatedly in the early 1950s and by the late 1950s it was considered a classic discovery. But for McClintock, movable elements were part of an elaborate system of genetic control that she hypothesized to explain development and differentiation. This theory was highly speculative and was not widely accepted, even by those who had discovered transposition independently. When Jacob and Monod presented their alternative model for gene regulation, the operon, her controller argument was discarded as incorrect. Transposition, however, was soon discovered in microorganisms and by the late 1970s was recognized as a phenomenon of biomedical importance. For McClintock, the award of the 1983 Nobel Prize to her for the discovery of movable genetic elements, long treated as a ...Continue Reading

Citations

Jul 21, 2010·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·J J Emerson, Wen-Hsiung Li
Nov 11, 2016·History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences·Esha Shah
Nov 14, 2002·Annual Review of Genetics·Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, Heinz Saedler
Jan 17, 2020·BioEssays : News and Reviews in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology·Emily L Casanova, Miriam K Konkel
Nov 20, 2013·Mobile Genetic Elements·Cristina TufarelliRichard R Meehan
Jun 15, 2021·Journal of Neurogenetics·Dustin J Sokolowski
May 18, 2010·Trends in Neurosciences·Tatjana SingerFred H Gage

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