The Contributions – and Collapse – of Lamarckian Heredity in Pasteurian Molecular Biology: 1. Lysogeny, 1900–1960
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- 作者：Laurent Loison ; Jean Gayon ; Richard M. Burian
- 关键词：Lamarckism ; Inheritance of acquired characters ; Lysogeny ; Molecular biology ; Bacteriophage ; Pasteur Institute ; Jules Bordet ; Eugène Wollman ; André Lwoff
- 刊名：Journal of the History of Biology
- 出版年：2017
- 出版时间：February 2017
- 年：2017
- 卷：50
- 期：1
- 页码：5-52
- 全文大小：
- 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
- 刊物主题：History of Science; Philosophy of Biology;
- 出版者：Springer Netherlands
- ISSN：1573-0387
- 卷排序：50
文摘
This article shows how Lamarckism was essential in the birth of the French school of molecular biology. We argue that the concept of inheritance of acquired characters positively shaped debates surrounding bacteriophagy and lysogeny in the Pasteurian tradition during the interwar period. During this period the typical Lamarckian account of heredity treated it as the continuation of protoplasmic physiology in daughter cells. Félix d’Hérelle applied this conception to argue that there was only one species of bacteriophage and Jules Bordet applied it to develop an account of bacteriophagy as a transmissible form of autolysis and to analyze the new phenomenon of lysogeny. In a long-standing controversy with Bordet, Eugène Wollman deployed a more morphological understanding of the inheritance of acquired characters, yielding a particulate, but still Lamarckian, account of lysogeny. We then turn to André Lwoff who, with several colleagues, completed Wollman’s research program from 1949 to 1953. We examine how he gradually set aside the Lamarckian background, finally removing inheritance of acquired characters from the resulting account of bacteriophagy and lysogeny. In the conclusion, we emphasize the complex dual role of Lamarckism as it moved from an assumed explanatory framework to a challenge that the nascent molecular biology had to overcome.