Phenogenetics
Encyclopedia
Phenogenetics was a new paradigm used to study genetics as pursued at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
. Phenogenetics would more accurately be described to be more comprehensive than genetics, to be extended into what is now understood to be epigenetics
, developmental biology
and embryology
. More specifically, how are genes expressed, including the biochemistry involved, etc. This paradigm is partly summarized in the diagram below and to the right.
wrote a long, confidential letter to Otmar von Verschuer, then director of the Institute for Genetic Biology and Race Hygiene at the University of Frankfurt. In this letter Fischer expressed critique – and certainly also self-critique – about the scientific development of his institute since the mid-1930’s.
At first glance this critical assessment seems surprising. For one thing, the KWI-A had profited considerably from the genetic and race policy of the National Socialist regime. The institute's research projects received generous financial support. For another, as the deputy chairman of the Medical Biology Section of the 'Academic Council' of the KWG (Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft), and even more so as a member of the Expert Committee for 'Anthropology and Ethnology' of the Emergency Association of German Science and the Reich Research Council respectively, Eugen Fischer had immense political prestige. ("Fischer himself received a number of honors and accolades in the Third Reich, of which his election to membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1937 was the most important. Just a year earlier, in 1939, Fischer had been awarded the Goethe Medal for Art and Science.")
As Fischer wrote in his letter to Verschuer of March 1940:
"According to Thomas S. Kühn, a paradigm shift occurs when the anomalies within a disciplinary system accumulate, that is when the number of riddles that cannot be solved using the means of the normal science guided by the paradigm predominant up to that time increases at such a rate that the disciplinary system as a whole enters a state of crisis.""
What was sought was a new paradigm that opened the perspective to solve problems the old one could not.
Ultimately, Fischer confided his long-term plan to Verschuer:
The impetus for this change had come partially from the zoologist Alfred Kühn, who in his capacity as chairman of the German Society for Genetics, had proposed the general topic 'Phenogenetics' for the human genetics section of a scientific congress to be held in Fall 1938. The initial idea was to deal with the topic in three separate talks about 'normal,' 'pathologic' and 'psychopathic' attributes, whereby Kühn placed particular value on supplementary demonstration cases.
Fischer had warned 'that human genetics in most cases [does not yield] results as clear […] as the experimenters are accustomed to from their material.'" Verschuer, with whom Fischer consulted immediately, confirmed this:
Verschuer also agreed with the 'tripartition' of contents, suggesting that supplementary demonstrations could be presented by Fischer’s staff members Wolfgang Abel and Engelhardt Bühler; the second talk about 'pathologic morphological and physiological attribute' be presented by Verschuer's chief staff physician Ferdinand Claußen; and the third talk about 'normal psychology and psychopathy including psychiatry' be held by Kurt Gottschaldt, director of the Genetic Psychology Department at the KWI-A. Verschuer’s proposals were implemented, and so the human genetics section at the Congress of the German Society for Genetic, which finally took place in Wurzburg in September 1938, was firmly in the hands of the KWI-A and its daughter institute in Frankfurt.
The three talks by Fischer, Claußen, and Gottschaldt were published immediately -- in greatly expanded versions – in the Zeitschrift fur inductive Abstamungs- und Vererbungslehre, the journal founded by Erwin Baur in 1908 which was thus the oldest journal in the world on the field of genetics. Above all Fischer’s 'Attempt for a Phenogenetics of the Normal Attributes of Humans,' one of the few publications by Fischer from the second half of the 1930s that was scientific in the strict sense, and the most extensive by far, constituted the conceptual basis for the restructuring of the KWI-A at the start of World War II.
, the main research objective is to explain how cells can develop with the same genetic composition, yet develop into different cells. The first major breakthrough in this area was in explaining "epigenetics
" as being due to the methylation of specific carbon atoms in the typical DNA
bases: A, C, G, T. Thus as bases become methylated, the bases deactivate successive genes in the DNA. However, this explanation is viewed as inadequate to express the more complex kinds of cellular differentiation that can be observed. At the time when phenogenetics was pursued at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, little was understood about the molecular basis of genetics (DNA); thus most research had to be speculative (non-scientific), permitting political biases such as racism to be included under the study of "phenogenetics".
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927. The Rockefeller Foundation supported both the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics...
. Phenogenetics would more accurately be described to be more comprehensive than genetics, to be extended into what is now understood to be epigenetics
Epigenetics
In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- -genetics...
, developmental biology
Developmental biology
Developmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop. Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and "morphogenesis", which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs and anatomy.- Related fields of study...
and embryology
Embryology
Embryology is a science which is about the development of an embryo from the fertilization of the ovum to the fetus stage...
. More specifically, how are genes expressed, including the biochemistry involved, etc. This paradigm is partly summarized in the diagram below and to the right.
The De-emphasis Of Twin Studies in National Socialist Science
On March 8, 1940, Eugen FischerEugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942...
wrote a long, confidential letter to Otmar von Verschuer, then director of the Institute for Genetic Biology and Race Hygiene at the University of Frankfurt. In this letter Fischer expressed critique – and certainly also self-critique – about the scientific development of his institute since the mid-1930’s.
At first glance this critical assessment seems surprising. For one thing, the KWI-A had profited considerably from the genetic and race policy of the National Socialist regime. The institute's research projects received generous financial support. For another, as the deputy chairman of the Medical Biology Section of the 'Academic Council' of the KWG (Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft), and even more so as a member of the Expert Committee for 'Anthropology and Ethnology' of the Emergency Association of German Science and the Reich Research Council respectively, Eugen Fischer had immense political prestige. ("Fischer himself received a number of honors and accolades in the Third Reich, of which his election to membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1937 was the most important. Just a year earlier, in 1939, Fischer had been awarded the Goethe Medal for Art and Science.")
"Yet in March 1940 Fischer was not satisfied with the development of the institute. The 'Faustian bargain' he had enter into with the National Socialists entailed numerous additional [political and administrative] duties for Fischer and his staff, [...] all of which were performed at the cost of the scientific work. More serious was that the emphases of research had shifted as a consequence of the interconnections with politics – and not necessarily in the direction Fischer would have wished. In 1933, under pressure from Arthur Gütt and with a view to the genetic health policy of the new rulers, Fischer had placed the stress on genetic pathology. [...] [After 1935,] the emphasis was shifted to strengthening genetic psychology instead. The dual course shift had the result that the research program was visibly fragmenting into unrelated, individual projects. Fischer recognized that the institute was in danger of losing its scientific focus."
As Fischer wrote in his letter to Verschuer of March 1940:
I have been very concerned recently, even as long ago as a year or two before the war, that the institute is working, so to speak, 'without a plan.' That was not always the case. When you were here, our first major task was to elaborate and test the twin method, and with this method to set human genetics properly on its feet. And I believe we can say that we managed to do this. In this field only touching up should be necessary. Also quite important. The point is to fill in the quite significant gaps and deepen our knowledge. But some areas, for instance, normal morphological attributes, but also numerous diseases, have pretty much been exhausted for twin research.
"According to Thomas S. Kühn, a paradigm shift occurs when the anomalies within a disciplinary system accumulate, that is when the number of riddles that cannot be solved using the means of the normal science guided by the paradigm predominant up to that time increases at such a rate that the disciplinary system as a whole enters a state of crisis.""
What was sought was a new paradigm that opened the perspective to solve problems the old one could not.
"Aside from the problem of demarcation from the university clinics and institutes working in the area of genetic pathology, Fischer probably foresaw that a clinical orientation of his institute would cause conflicts of competence with two other Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, which, under the direction of Huge Spatz since 1937, had turned increasingly to questions of genetic pathology in neurological disorders, mental illnesses and mental disability, and above all with the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich under RüdinErnst RüdinErnst Rüdin , was a Swiss psychiatrist, geneticist and eugenicist. Rüdin was born in St. Gallen, Switzerland...
. In Munich the very founding of the Department for Genetic Psychology had been taken as an affront, and the vehement exchange of blows concerning diabetes research in 1937 had shown that the two institutes were bound to get in each other’s way in the field of genetic pathology. Against this background it seemed to Fischer, who had never worked purely clinically anyway, that a one-sided orientation of research at the KWI-A toward genetic pathology – while neglecting Fischer’s own original research field, the heredity of 'normal' (not pathological) attributes -- to be a strategic mistake, although he certainly held genetic pathology to be a constitutive element of his further research strategy."
Ultimately, Fischer confided his long-term plan to Verschuer:
But as to the main point, such an institute needs an ambitious plan. And because I can not receive it from Lenz’s sphere of interest, let along through his initiative, I do it alone. But such a plan is conceived for a number of years, and certainly – not only presumably – longer than I will be in office here. Because I do not doubt in the least that you will be my successor someday, in truth I would like to begin with a long-term plan only if I have the hope that you like it enough to pursue it further.
I once told you in passing that I would like to set up a collection of work for the genetic biology of humans. I will do this in any case. But what I would most like to do now, or at least right after the war, is to begin work in this sense as well. I am thus thinking of an ambitious phenogenetics.
Introduction of Phenogenetics Into National Socialist Science
"It is important to keep in mind that the idea was not new and that this was not the first time Fischer had discussed it with Verschuer. Rather, phenogenetics was already structured within the concept of anthropobiology, which had been one of the institute’s founding fields. From 1938 on, Fischer – in lively intellectual exchange with Verschuer – worked intensively to elaborate a concept of phenogenetics."The impetus for this change had come partially from the zoologist Alfred Kühn, who in his capacity as chairman of the German Society for Genetics, had proposed the general topic 'Phenogenetics' for the human genetics section of a scientific congress to be held in Fall 1938. The initial idea was to deal with the topic in three separate talks about 'normal,' 'pathologic' and 'psychopathic' attributes, whereby Kühn placed particular value on supplementary demonstration cases.
Fischer had warned 'that human genetics in most cases [does not yield] results as clear […] as the experimenters are accustomed to from their material.'" Verschuer, with whom Fischer consulted immediately, confirmed this:
We are, of course, still far from being able to perform phenogenetics of the kind Kühn conducts on the flour moth. The objective lies clearly before us, and we are seeking to move forward by combining research on the history of development and pathogenetics with pure genetic analyses. At first we must be content to perform casual analysis of the phenotypical manifestation of Variation. If phenogenetics is thus conceived in this more humble sense, I consent to the topic. I also think it is the most current one.
Verschuer also agreed with the 'tripartition' of contents, suggesting that supplementary demonstrations could be presented by Fischer’s staff members Wolfgang Abel and Engelhardt Bühler; the second talk about 'pathologic morphological and physiological attribute' be presented by Verschuer's chief staff physician Ferdinand Claußen; and the third talk about 'normal psychology and psychopathy including psychiatry' be held by Kurt Gottschaldt, director of the Genetic Psychology Department at the KWI-A. Verschuer’s proposals were implemented, and so the human genetics section at the Congress of the German Society for Genetic, which finally took place in Wurzburg in September 1938, was firmly in the hands of the KWI-A and its daughter institute in Frankfurt.
The three talks by Fischer, Claußen, and Gottschaldt were published immediately -- in greatly expanded versions – in the Zeitschrift fur inductive Abstamungs- und Vererbungslehre, the journal founded by Erwin Baur in 1908 which was thus the oldest journal in the world on the field of genetics. Above all Fischer’s 'Attempt for a Phenogenetics of the Normal Attributes of Humans,' one of the few publications by Fischer from the second half of the 1930s that was scientific in the strict sense, and the most extensive by far, constituted the conceptual basis for the restructuring of the KWI-A at the start of World War II.
Recent Developments
If one considers developmental biologyDevelopmental biology
Developmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop. Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and "morphogenesis", which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs and anatomy.- Related fields of study...
, the main research objective is to explain how cells can develop with the same genetic composition, yet develop into different cells. The first major breakthrough in this area was in explaining "epigenetics
Epigenetics
In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- -genetics...
" as being due to the methylation of specific carbon atoms in the typical DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
bases: A, C, G, T. Thus as bases become methylated, the bases deactivate successive genes in the DNA. However, this explanation is viewed as inadequate to express the more complex kinds of cellular differentiation that can be observed. At the time when phenogenetics was pursued at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, little was understood about the molecular basis of genetics (DNA); thus most research had to be speculative (non-scientific), permitting political biases such as racism to be included under the study of "phenogenetics".