I am going to launch a revolution in genetics

                                                                                                                                              Muying Zhou   21. Sep. 2013

Abstract: I found that the issue studied by G. Mendel could address only one instead of all of constituent elements of heredity. Yet, the fact is that the heredity contains two elements.

   To seek the hereditary material (i.e. germplasm or the physical basis responsible for producing offspring) people should ask such question as: why can a pea reproduce peas£¿Such question¡¯s answer can be found in logic: there must be a physical basis (i.e. germplasm or the hereditary material) responsible for produce offspring in pea. As a producer pea must have some production means or tool (to produce offspring). So production element must be a constituent element in the hereditary material.

However, Mendel¡¯s work was performed to answer such question as: all these peas are offspring from same parents, why are some of them tall and others short£¿The essence of such question is: all these are products (offspring) from same producer (parents), why does same producer produce products with different characters (specification), and what should be responsible for this? Such question never asks what material is the hereditary material; instead, it asks merely what element (or material) should be responsible for characters (specification) of the products. Mendel found this element is the gene which was identified as DNA later and the gene is no other than the product¡¯s specification (characters) element (being the blueprint or template).

Therefore, the gene merely is one element of the hereditary material.

 

 

Text:

Today I declare to the world: Genetics is undergoing a revolution. Some of the original consensuses will be replaced by new knowledge. For example, the concepts:

¡€         Germplasm: ¡°the hereditary material of germ cells: genes",

¡€         "Genetics is the science of genes", and

¡€         "Gregor Mendel: the father of genetics" (cited from the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia online)

 

will be replaced by the following concepts:

¡€         Germplasm is the hereditary material, consisting of a transcriptase system and genes,

¡€         Genetics is the science of transcriptase systems and genes, and

¡€         Gregor Mendel is the father of genes.

 

This revolution is caused by one of my discovery. I found that the issue studied by G. Mendel could address only one and not all constituent elements of heredity. Yet, the fact is, heredity requires two elements.

 

There are two basic issues in genetics.

First: why can a pea reproduce peas, and why can a melon reproduce melons? In short, why can organism reproduce the same organism?

 

The answer can be found in logic: there must be a physical basis (i.e. germplasm or the hereditary material) responsible for producing alike offspring (organism) in the organism (pea, melon). The real task is to answer the following question: what specific material is the physical basis responsible for producing alike offspring? That is to say, this is the issue addressing the hereditary material.

 

¡°Physical basis responsible for producing alike offspring¡± means that there must be a production element (being able to produce offspring) within the physical basis. Namely, there is an element: production element.

Today, we know that organisms are formed of nucleic acids and proteins, so this ¡°element¡± should be the synthesizer of nucleic acids and proteins. This situation is similar to the situation in which we can affirm that ¡°the production line should be an element of the factory¡¯s physical basis¡± from ¡°the factory can produce the product (e.g., plane, car, tank)¡±.

 

Second: all these are offspring from same parents, so why are some of them (pea) tall and others short (Gregor Mendel¡¯s experiment), why do some of them (Drosophila) have red eyes and others have white eyes (T. H. Morgan¡¯s experiment), and why does one (baby) look like the father and another look like the mother?

 

Like the question ¡°those are all planes from the same factory, so why are some of them Boeing 727s and others Boeing 757s?¡± The essence of these questions is as follows: all these are products (offspring) from same production entity (factory or parents), but why do they possess different characters (specification), and what should be responsible for this?

 

Such question never asks what material (or element) should be responsible for producing product; instead, it asks merely what element (or material) should be responsible for characters (specification) of the product. That is to say, this is the issue addressing only one instead of all of constituent elements of heredity. The answer to this can also be found in logic: within the production entity (factory or parents), there must be an element prescribing to the production entity the specification (characters) of its products. The real task is to answer the following question: what specific material is this element?

 

If we enter the factory for investigation and research, finally we will find that this ¡°element¡± is the blueprint. Through his famous experiment, Gregor Mendel showed that this element in an organism is the gene, which was later identified as consisting of DNA.

 

Therefore, the gene merely is the specification element; in addition to the gene the hereditary material still contains another element: production element.   

 

As a production element the production line is not the environment or a set of conditions, but rather a constituent part of the factory. That is to say, without the production line (how to produce a product), there would be no factory. Similarly, as a production element the synthesizer of nucleic acids and proteins is also not the environment or a set of conditions, but rather constituent part of the organism. Namely, without the synthesizer of nucleic acids and proteins (how to reproduce offspring), there would be no organism.

 

Within the production entity, the specification element (e.g. DNA, the blueprint) is a passive but very specific element; instead, the production element (e.g. the synthesizer of nucleic acids and proteins, the production line) is an active, but not so specific element. However, both together form the physical basis of the production entity. Without a production element, no product could be produced; without a specification element, how could the product be specific?

 

Then, what specific materials are contained in the production element of the heredity? That is the question we are going to address henceforth.

 

In my opinion, the facts of molecular biology prove that this element is no other than a set of transcription system material dominated by transcriptase. Without transcriptase, DNA is no benefit to the organism. Transcriptase builds 3¡¯,5¡¯-phosphodiester bonds to perform transcription and other components of this system help it perform transcription at the right time and place. All of the RNA of a cell is synthesized through transcription, and these RNAs produce all of the proteins of a cell and new cells later on. Every individual is produced by a cell (oosperm). Therefore, a full transcription system in the oosperm really is the synthesizer of the nucleic acids and proteins of an individual.

 

Namely, it is this system that causes DNA (genome) to be transcribed and a cell to go through an automatic, programmed course until new cells, and even new individuals, are produced. Any individual, no matter whether animal or plant, is a normal, predetermined and natural result of a certain egg¡¯s transcriptase system performing transcription of DNA (a genome). The ewe ¡°Dolly¡± is the result of a Scottish Blackface ewe egg¡¯s transcriptase system performing transcription on a Finn Dorset ewe¡¯s DNA (genome) (1). The so-called ¡°synthetic cell¡± is the result of a Mycoplasma capricolum cell¡¯s transcriptase system performing transcription of a ¡°man-made¡± DNA (genome) (2).

 

References:

1. I. Wilmut, A.E. Schnieke, J. McWhir, J. Kind, & K.H.S. Campbell: Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells, Nature 385, 810-813 (1997).

2. J. Craig Venter et al: Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome, Science, 329, 52-56 (2010).

The author

Muying Zhou  The central hospital of Shandong Feicheng Coal-Mining Group Corporation, Feicheng, Shandong  271608, China

 

Email: fckzmy@aliyun.com & fckzmy@163.com