title: Darwin and Mendel today: a comment on "Limits of imagination: the 150th Anniversary of Mendel's Laws, and why Mendel failed to see the importance of his discovery for Darwin's theory of evolution".
abstract: We comment on a recent paper by Rama Singh, who concludes that Mendel deserved to be called the father of genetics, and Darwin would not have understood the significance of Mendel's paper had he read it. We argue that Darwin should have been regarded as the father of genetics not only because he was the first to formulate a unifying theory of heredity, variation, and development -- Pangenesis, but also because he clearly described almost all genetical phenomena of fundamental importance, including what he called "prepotency" and what we now call "dominance" or "Mendelian inheritance". The word "gene" evolved from Darwin's imagined "gemmules", instead of Mendel's so-called "factors".
authors.affiliation: Henan Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Biological Breeding, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, 453003, China; Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H7, Canada.|Henan Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Biological Breeding, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, 453003, China; Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H7, Canada.
authors.forename: Yongsheng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Henan Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Biological Breeding, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, 453003, China; Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H7, Canada.|Henan Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Biological Breeding, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, 453003, China; Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H7, Canada.
authors.forename: Xiuju
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D036281:Genetic Research / Q000266:history*; D007092:Imagination; D012641:Selection, Genetic
keywords: Darwin; Mendel; Mendelian inheritance; Pangenesis; Pangenèse; genetics; génétique; hérédité mendélienne