Conrad Hal Waddington (1905-1975) : el naixement de l'epigenètica
- Autores: José Luis Paternain Suberviola, Maria Cabré Bargalló, Miguel Angel Montero i Simó, Antoni Romeu Figuerola
- Localización: Actes d'Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, ISSN 2013-1666, ISSN-e 2013-9640, Vol. 2, Nº. 2, 2009, págs. 135-145
- Idioma: catalán
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Resumen
Waddington was an active investigator as an embryologist and genetist from the 1930s to 1950s. Over this period he did a brilliant work in theoretical biology developing concepts such as «genetic assimilation» and «epigenetic landscape ».Waddington�s epigenetic landscape is a metaphor for how gene regulation modulates development. This idea was actually based on experiment: Waddington found that one effect of mutation was to affect how cells differentiated. In the studies of development,Waddington speculated on the meaning of the «epigenetic landscape» as reflected in his works Organisers and Genes (1940) and The strategy of the Genes (1957). Waddington describes epigenetics as the causal analysis of development, in other words, all those mechanisms (genetics and environmental) necessary to activate the genetic program of development.
