Waddington, Conrad Hal

Conrad Waddington (known as “ Wad ” among friends, was called Con in the family) was born November 8, 1905 in the family of Hal ( English Wad ) and Mary Ellen ( English Mary Ellen ) ugrod. Warner Waddington. Until the age of three, he lived with his parents in India, where his father worked at a tea factory in Vayanad County. In 1910, at the age of four, he moved to England, where he lived in a family of uncles, aunts and grandmothers. His parents returned from India in 1928. In his childhood, he was especially attached to the local pharmacist and distant relative, Dr. Doug, whom Waddington called "grandfather," and who introduced young Conrad to a variety of sciences from chemistry to geology ^[6] . In his first year at Waddington University, he attended an intensive chemistry course with , about which Waddington referred to as a "brilliant teacher of chemistry." Holmyard introduced Waddington to the works of the Alexandrian Gnostics and Arab alchemists, thanks to which Waddington received a philosophical understanding of the interconnected holistic systems. Later, Waddington noted that this early philosophical education prepared him for the perception of the ideas of Alfred Whitehead in the 1920s and 1930s and the cybernetics of Norbert Wiener in the 1940s ^[7] .

He studied at and the Cambridge University in the field of natural sciences. In 1926, at the final exam, he became the first in geology ^[8] . In 1928 he received a scholarship from Arnold Herzenberg (Arnold Gerstenberg) at the University of Cambridge to study philosophy ^[9] . Until 1942, as a teacher at Christ College, he lectured on zoology. Here among his close friends were Gregory Bateson , Walter Gropius , Charles Snow , Solly Zuckerman , Joseph Needham , John Desmond Bernal ^{[10] [11]} . His scientific interests began with paleontology, then moved to the field of heredity and the development of living organisms. He also studied philosophy.

During World War II, he worked as a specialist in operations research in the interests of the British Air Force , from 1944-1945 he was a scientific adviser to the commander in chief of . After the war, he became a professor of animal genetics at the University of Edinburgh . For the rest of his life, he lived and worked in Edinburgh , except for the one-year period in 1960-1961, which he spent at Wesleyan University in the USA ^[12] . His personal documents are kept in the library of the University of Edinburgh.

Waddington was twice married. From his first marriage, he had a son, C.J. Waddington, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota , divorced in 1936. Subsequently, he married Justin Blanco White, daughter of the writer , from whom he had two daughters who also devoted themselves to science: became a famous mathematician, - an anthropologist ^[13] .

In the early 1930s, Weddington, like many other embryologists, was searching for chemical agents that lead to the development of the amphibian neural tube. The complexity of the problem was beyond the scope of the then technical capabilities, which led many biologists to abandon further research. Waddington, however, came up with the idea that genetics would give answers to embryology questions, and in 1935 he began work in the laboratory of Thomas Morgan in California , where experiments were carried out on Drosophila flies . This was the time when most biologists considered the genes responsible for the transmission of only insignificant signs of the body, such as eye color.

In the late 1930s, Waddington built formal models of how regulatory gene products can influence embryonic development, and demonstrated by the example of Drosophila fly wings how this effect can be studied by systematic analysis of mutations. The effectiveness of the proposed methods was confirmed by Christiana Nyuslein-Volhard and Eric Vishaus , who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in medicine for their research. Then, at a period of maximum creative activity, he discovered mutations that affect cellular phenotypes and wrote his first textbook on development epigenetics . The last term meant the external manifestations of the action of genes.

Waddington is also the author of the concept of (the term “autonomy” is also used in Russian literature), which means the ability of organisms to generate the same phenotypes, regardless of the action of genes or environmental conditions. He owns the discovery of a mechanism called genetic assimilation, which allows the animal’s response to environmental influences to become a permanent part of the process of embryonic development, he also proposed possible principles for the action of this mechanism.

In 1972, Waddington founded the Center for Human Ecology [1] .

Epigenetic landscape

Waddington belongs to the figurative expression "epigenetic landscape", which metaphorically means the effect of genes on the development of the organism ^[14] . The meaning of this metaphor is as follows. The usual geographical landscape defines the riverbeds, that is, the paths of their flow from source to mouth. Any changes in the landscape (for example, caused by earthquakes, landslides) change the picture of the terrain and change the directions and paths of the rivers. Thus, if we imagine the path of development of the organism in the form of a river, where the source means fertilization, and the mouth means physical maturity, then the relief of the area where this river flows and which directs its flow represents the external conditions that determine the development of the organism. In fairness, it should be said that instead of the river, Waddington himself preferred to talk about a marble ball that rolls down from the top of the mountain, the relief of which determines its path to the foot. For the "trajectory" of the body in the process of its development, Waddington introduced a special term - . Mutations in relation to the creod represent a “seismic factor”, which, like earthquakes, changes the epigenetic landscape. The latter idea was the most revolutionary: Waddington was the first to formulate a modern understanding of the role of mutations as factors that influence the development of the organism and, therefore, form the basis of variability, one of the three main factors of biological evolution.

Genetic Assimilation

Waddington suggested that there is a process called , which captures changes in the genotype acquired by the body, making them inherited. Waddington investigated one of the signs of Drosophila flies, which is the absence of transverse veins in the wings. This change occurs when eggs are exposed to high temperatures. Having exposed the flies to heat for several generations, Waddington noted that over time, in some individuals, the absence of transverse veins begins to appear without any thermal effects, that is, the traits acquired by the ancestors assimilated, reflected in the genotype of the offspring ^[15] .

Genetic assimilation is sometimes considered the Lamarckian mechanism, although Waddington considered this mechanism to be Darwinian ^[16] . As wrote, “genetic assimilation looks Lamarckian, but it is not. This is a special case of the evolution of phenotypic plasticity ” ^[17] .

Neo-Darwinism

In literature, Waddington’s ideas are usually not considered non-Darwinian ^[18]. However, some theorists of the synthetic theory of evolution consider Waddington an anti-Darwinist, since he believed that microevolution and macroevolution are due to various mechanisms ^[19] . According to Wilkins, Waddington was "perceived as a critic of neo-Darwinism during his lifetime." His criticism concerned the unrealistic, in his opinion, “atomistic” model of genetic selection and evolution of characters. ” In particular, he believed that neo-Darwinism ignores the effect of intense gene interaction and absolutizes the principle of random mutations, which is actually false ^[20] . Even despite criticism of neo-Darwinism, Waddington considered himself a Darwinist and tried with his works to expand and correct the Darwinian theory, and not replace it.

• Epigenetic Theory of Evolution

Books

• Waddington, CH (1939). An Introduction to Modern Genetics . London: George Alien & Unwin Ltd.
• Waddington, CH (1940). Organizers & genes . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Waddington, CH (1941). The Scientific Attitude , Pelican Books
• Waddington, CH and others (1942). Science and Ethics , George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
• Waddington, CH (1946). How animals develop . London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
• Waddington, CH (1953). The Epigenetics of birds . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Waddington, CH (1956). Principles of Embryology . London: George Allen & Unwin.
• Waddington, CH (1957). The Strategy of the Genes . London: George Allen & Unwin.
• Waddington, CH (1959). Biological organization cellular and subcellular: proceedings of a Symposium . London: Pergamon Press.
• Waddington, CH (1960). The ethical animal . London: George Allen & Unwin.
• Waddington, CH (1961). The human evolutionary system . In: Michael Banton (Ed.), Darwinism and the Study of Society . London: Tavistock.
• Waddington, CH (1961). The nature of life . London: George, Allen, & Unwin.
• Waddington, CH (1966). Principles of development and differentiation . New York: Macmillan Company.
• Waddington, CH (1966). New patterns in genetics and development . New York: Columbia University Press.
• Waddington, CH, ed. (1968-72). Towards a Theoretical Biology . 4 vols. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Waddington, CH, Kenny, A. , Longuet-Higgins, HC , Lucas, JR (1972). The Nature of Mind , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (1971-3 Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, online )
• Waddington, CH, Kenny, A., Longuet-Higgins, HC, Lucas, JR (1973). The Development of Mind , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (1971-3 Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, online )
• Waddington, CH (1977) (published posthumously). Tools for Thought . London: Jonathan Cape Ltd.

Articles

• Waddington CH 1942. Canalization of development and the inheritance of acquired characters. Nature 150: 563-565.
• Waddington, CH 1953. Genetic assimilation of an acquired character. Evolution 7: 118-126.
• Waddington, CH 1953. Epigenetics and evolution. Symp Soc. Exp. Biol 7: 186-199.
• Waddington, CH 1956. Genetic assimilation of the bithorax phenotype. Evolution 10: 1-13.
• Waddington, CH 1961. Genetic assimilation. Advances Genet. 10: 257-290.
• Waddington, CH 1974. A Catastrophe Theory of Evolution. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 231: 32-42.

• NAHSTE Project Record of CH Waddington
• Induction and the Origin of Developmental Genetics - works by Salome Gluecksohn-Schoenhimer and Conrad Hal Waddington
• Epigenetics news