This is the first comprehensive review and discussion of meiosis, the antithesis of fertilization. Meiosis is a special form of nuclear division "invented" by sexually reproducing eukaryotes to ensure that a correct chromosome complement is maintained over successive generations. In this masterly treatment, the author describes the scheduling, mechanisms, biochemistry and the genetic control of the events of meiosis in sexual systems as well as the variants adopted by subsexual forms. This will be an essential text for upper division students and research workers in genetics, cytology and...

This is the first comprehensive review and discussion of meiosis, the antithesis of fertilization. Meiosis is a special form of nuclear division "invented" by sexually reproducing eukaryotes to ensure that a correct chromosome complement is maintained over successive generations. In this masterly treatment, the author describes the scheduling, mechanisms, biochemistry and the genetic control of the events of meiosis in sexual systems as well as the variants adopted by subsexual forms. This will be an essential text for upper division students and research workers in genetics, cytology and...

material can serve both autocatalytic and heterocatalytic functions. Thus not only is it unique in itB capacity for self-replication but its base sequence determines the specificity of proteins. And enzyme proteins are immediately responsible for the peripheral metabolism which enables the organism to impose its own kind of order on the raw materials it absorbs. The course of development is determined not only by the nature of the genetic material but by its over-all amount and the relative frequency of the different functional units. Differential rates of epigenetic activity matter also. In...

Introduction When the study of heredity and variation first came to be treated as a scientific subject-and this, one must remember, was only just over a hundred years ago-there was an unfortunate separation between the disciplines of cytology and experimental breeding. This separation was based partly on a lack of understanding and partly on a lack of the desire to understand. Even WILLIAM BATESON, the first apostle of mendelism in England, had a blind spot for cytology and for many years dogmatically refused to believe that MENDEL'S determinants were transmitted and distributed by the...

'The mind unlearns with difficulty what has long been impressed upon it. ' Seneca Reductionism, is, without question, the most successful analytical approach available to the experimental scientist. With the advent of techniques for cloning and sequencing DNA, and the development of a variety of molecular probes for localizing macromolecules in cells and tissues, the biologist now has available the most powerful reductionist tools ever invented. The application of these new technologies has led to a veritable explosion of facts regarding the types and organization of nucleotide sequences...

neoessity for making it. Yet, clearly, the problem of development is largely one of filling "the vacuum between determinant and character" (DARLINGTON 1951). Nowadays the chromosome theory can be presented in much greater detail and with utter confidence, but its two main features remain the same. However, while the role of the chromosomes in heredity and development has been appreciated for a long time, the manner in which they perform their genetic and epigenetic functions has become amenable to critical investigation only in recent years. There is, therefore, still an unmistakable tendency...