How do you celebrate the 200th birthday of the "Father of Genetics"?
He needs to dig up his body and get his genetic information.
A group of scientists in the Czech Republic did something this year to honor a scientist who helped lay the groundwork for genetics in the 19th century.
The second largest city in the Czech Republic is called Brno. In honor of the bicentennial of Mendel's birth, local researchers searched for ways to remember the man and honor his memory. There were possibilities of a festival, a conference, and a statue.
Ji Duek wondered if the founder of genetics had ever been tested for genetic diseases.
rka Pospilov is a geneticist who is also the vice rector for research at Masaryk University.
She thought the idea of analyzing Mendel's genes was crazy.
Pospilov went to different specialists at the university to find out what could be.
She asked the anthropologists if they had experience with analyzing remains of historical people. She consulted with people who work in archaeology.
They were able to get permission from the Augustinians to exhume and run genetic tests on his remains. The Augustinian tomb in the city's central cemetery was thought to be the final resting place of Mendel.
The religious leaders consulted with Augustinians in Rome and in the Czech Republic. Permission was given eventually.
He had an extraordinarily large brain 🧠 and was 168 cm tall.🚶♂️We are talking about the founder of genetics, Gregor Johann Mendel. His remains are currently being studied by scientists from Masaryk University. pic.twitter.com/2TZEUNbrPQ
— BrnoNewsCTV (@BrnoNewsCTV) November 4, 2021
A heavy sense of responsibility was felt by a member of the research team.
The first course of genetics at the university is taught byGregor Mendel. He's very important to everyone here in Brno. He stands at the beginning of everything we do.
Pardy says that he was ahead of his time when he used math to study inheritance in pea plants.
To get his numbers right, he analyzed a set of about 25,000 plants. He was a visionary and one step ahead of the game.
After 1900, geneticists rediscovered his work and realized its implications, which led to the rise of his fame.
Daniel Fairbanks, a plant geneticist and author of a book called Gregor Mendel: His Life and Legacy, says that no one at the time expected his work to be so important in science.
One of the five coffins was stacked on top of the other. It was a bit of a surprise that the tomb's marker had only four Augustinian brothers' names on it.
There was a metal coffin at the bottom of the picture. It was lined with newspapers that were old when he died. Pardy said they wanted more proof that the coffin held the remains.
Pardy says that they came up with the idea of going through his possessions to confirm his identity.
Mendel's microscopes, his eyeglasses, written records of his meteorological measurements, and a cigarette case are some of the items that museums allow curators to take. A hair was found in a book about astronomy that the team searched inside.
They felt certain that they'd found the body when they looked at all of that and compared it to the skeleton.
His genes were found to be linked to diabetes, heart problems and other diseases. There is a variant in a gene that has been linked to neurological issues.
He had a mental or neurological disorder that caused him to have very severe nervous breakdowns. It was a fascinating discovery that these scientists made.
Today's scientists want to know how a man would feel about being disturbed in his grave.
From what I know, he may have been happy about this. It's not possible to directly ask him.
Pospilov does the same thing.
He would be happy, that's what we think. She says that just before he died, he requested that an autopsy be done.
She says that he wasn't against researching his own body.
She says that he wouldn't mind being part of research even after his death, even though he didn't know anything about genetics.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
