HEREDITY

Inheritance, often known as heredity, is the process of passing on traits from one generation to the
next, either through gametes; sperm and ova, in sexual reproduction or by asexual reproductive
bodies in asexual reproduction.

Heredity is the cause of similarities between individuals, while Variation is the cause of differences
between individuals.
Every cells arise from preexisting cells so, genetic material must be replicated and transferred from
parent to offspring cell during each cell division.

THEORIES FOR HEREDITY

The theories to explain the phenomenon of inheritance can be categorized under the following
headings:
1. Vapor and fluid theories
2. Preformation theories
3. Particulate theories

1. Vapor and Fluid Theories

Pythagoras (500 B.C.) suggested that every organ in an animal’s body is said to release a certain
form of vapor. A new person is created when these vapors combine.

Hippocrates (400 B.C.) believed all areas of an individual’s body contribute to reproduction,
which is how traits are passed down to offspring.

Similarly, Aristotle (350 B.C.) hypothesized that the semen of men had a “vitalizing” effect and
compared it to highly purified blood. He claimed that the father gives the new life its motion
while the mother provides the inert material.
2. Preformation Theories
W. Harvey (1578–1657) hypothesized that semen solely has a vitalizing function and that all
animals develop from eggs.

R. de Graaf (1641–1673) hypothesized that both parents should contribute to the heredity of the
progeny after observing that the offspring would exhibit traits of both the father and the mother.

J. Swammerdam (1679) examined the growth of frogs and insects and proposed that the
development of an organism is only the simple enlargement of a small, already-formed
individual.

These theories which advanced the concept of the presence of preformed embryo in the sex cells
are known as preformation theories.

The preformation theory was finally disproved by K.F. Wolff (1738-1794), who suggested that
neither the egg nor the sperm had a structure like a homunculus but that the gametes contained an
undifferentiated life substance capable of producing the organized organism after fertilization.
Wolff, however, thought that unidentified vital forces were responsible for these tissues and
organs’ development.

3. Particulate Theories
Maupertuis (1689–1759) postulated that each parent’s body produces tiny particles and the
particles of both parents combine to create a new individual during sexual reproduction.
He theorized that in some cases, the male parent’s particles might predominate over the female
parent’s, leading to the birth of a male individual while the female parent’s particles
predomination over the male parent’s particles leads to birth of a female individual.
The idea of biparental inheritance via elementary particles was therefore put forth by him.

Charles Darwin (1868) presented his pangenesis theory which stated that every component of an
animal's body produces several tiny particles known as gemmules. These gemmules are at first
collected in the blood and later on are concentrated in the reproductive organs. When the animal
reproduces into new individual, these gemmules pass on to it and it has blending of both parents.
By this mechanism acquired characters would also be inherited because as the parts of the body
changed so did the pangenes or gemmules they produced.
However, the theory of pangenesis was disapproved by Galton (1823–1911) and Weismann
(1835–1934). To explain heredity, Weismann proposed the germplasm theory. His theory stated
that there are two types of cells in an organism’s body; somatic and reproductive cells. The
reproductive cells create sperm and ova, whereas the somatic cells create the body and its many
organ systems.

It was Gregor Johann Mendel who laid the foundation of our modern concept of the particulate
theory. Through his well-known studies of the pea plant, he was able to determine general rules
for the inheritance of a number of distinct traits, including seed color. He made the accurate
assumption that each trait is caused by a pair of inherited variables, now known as genes, and
thus correctly understood the observed patterns of heredity.
He was able to observe the mathematical patterns of inheritance from one generation to next
generation. Mendel’s Laws of Heredity are typically expressed as:
1. Law of Dominance: An organism with alternate forms of a gene will express the form that is
dominant.
2. Law of Segregation: A gene pair controls every inherited trait. Parental genes are arbitrarily
distributed among the sex cells so that each sex cell contains just one of the pair of genes.
When sex cells combine to form embryos, offspring receive one genetic allele from each
parent.
3. Law of Independent Assortment: To prevent the inheritance of one feature from
influencing the inheritance of another, the genes for various traits are arranged in separate
groups.

However, he failed to explain the exact process by which these factors pass on the sex cells.

By 1860, the sperm and egg were known to be the means of transmitting genetic information.
Ernst Haeckel proposed that the nucleus is responsible for inheritance after observing that sperm
was mostly composed of nuclear material.

In 1884, Hertwig identified the hereditary substance with the chromatin of nucleus.

Walter S. Sutton (1902) proposed the chromosome theory of heredity in which he postulated that
the newly rediscovered Mendel’s hereditary factors were physically located on chromosomes.
This idea combined the fields of genetics and cytology and offered a transmission mechanism to
explain the behavior of Mendel’s components.

Despite reporting the first occurrence of linkage in a sweet pea in 1906, Bateson and Punnett
failed to explain the phenomena of linkage.

Johannsen (1909) developed the genotype-phenotype concept to differentiate between genetic

and environmental changes. He proposed that a person’s phenotype represents the observable
structural and functional characteristics that are formed by the interaction between genotype and
environment while the genotype of an individual represents the totality of heredity.

T.H. Morgan (1866–1945) proposed in 1911 the theory of linkage. He turned the chromosome
theory of inheritance into the concept of genes being located in a linear array on each
chromosome.

The age of molecular genetics began after the discovery of DNA structure in 1953, which
revealed that DNA nucleotides are the basic unit of heredity and that a gene is made up of a
collection of nucleotides.

IMPORTANCE
Understanding the mechanisms of heredity is a key to the study of biodiversity for at least three
reasons.
1. Evolutionary processes such as population adaptability, lineage diversification, and the
emergence of new species all depend on genetic variation.
2. Existing genetic variety among communities may be a reflection of their recent past and a
sign of potential future change.
3. The diversity of molecular genetic markers can be used to determine the taxonomic status of
certain populations as well as the relationships between living groups of animals.
4. For biological fields of study like development, cytology, physiology, and morphology,
having a basic understanding of how genes function is a prerequisite.
REFERENCE
Cooper GM. The Cell: A Molecular Approach. 2nd edition. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates;
2000. Heredity, Genes, and DNA. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9944/

Children resemble their parents.  DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Accessed
from: http://www.dnaftb.org/1/bio.html. Accessed on: 01.09.2022

Michael F. Antolin and William C. Black. (2007). Genes, Description of. In Encyclopedia of
Biodiversity, Elsevier Inc., pg 1-11

Verma P.S. and Agarwal V.K. (2005). Genetics, Human Genetics and Eugenics, In Cell Biology,
Genetics, Molecular Biology, Evolution and Ecology. Multi-color Edition. S. Chand & Company
Ltd. Ram nagar, New Delhi, pg 3-9