%0 Journal Article
%T Review of "Haldane, Mayr, and Beanbag Genetics" by Krishna Dronamraju
%A Ken Weiss
%J Investigative Genetics
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2041-2223-2-19
%X The context is the discussion of the formative years of 20th-century genetics and evolutionary theory about how reductionist one can be to capture the nature of evolution and genetics effectively. The context is debate between Haldane and Ernst Mayr, whom the author also knew, about the relevance of the then-new field of population genetics. The phrase 'beanbag genetics' was coined in the mid-20th century to refer to an alleged view that evolution could be understood one gene at a time, each independently on its own terms, and that selection worked gene-by-gene. Mayr used the phrase to resist such reductionism, arguing that organisms rather than genomes are important, because they are the result of complex interactions among genes. The discussion took place as part of the formation of the 'modern synthesis' that united Darwin's and Mendel's thinking, a synthesis which began around 1920 and developed during the subsequent generation. Only by around the 1960s was it somewhat displaced theoretically by other issues, such as 'non-Darwinian' neutralism, and by a focus on the actual nature of genes and genomes that was being revealed.Dronamraju argues that the disagreements between Mayr and Haldane were substantial, if gentlemanly, and their views were never as far apart as caricatures of them suggested. As Dronamraju points out, though their studies were largely single-gene-focused, population geneticists indeed considered multilocus interactive models, and their debate was not whether genes interact but how important nonadditive effects are in understanding the fate of variants at a single gene. The issues are alive today in the context of extensive sequence data, though few today pay much attention to these more theoretical details, being concerned instead, rightly or wrongly, with immediate analytical challenges rather than the role of history in framing our views today.Dronamraju presents the arguments of the time and some of the subsequent views of and commentaries
%U http://www.investigativegenetics.com/content/2/1/19