Mendel’s journey to Paris and London: context and significance for the origin of genetics.

From a letter Gregor Mendel wrote to his brother-in-law, and a photograph of a large group of people in Paris, it is known that Mendel visited the International Exhibition in London in August 1862. There has been speculation about the status and composition of this travel group; for example, whether it was an official delegation from the city of Brünn. There has also been speculation on whether Mendel visited Charles Darwin on that occasion. We have now found a partial list of participants of the second 1862 pleasure train (Vergnügungszug) from Vienna to Paris and London, which includes Mendel’s name. The names of 158 participants make a partial reconstruction of the travel group possible. Digital newspapers were researched to get more insight into the status, residence, and profession of the participants. Most belonged to the upper-class of the Austrian Empire, among them several citizens of Brünn. Such luxurious all-inclusive pleasure trains were a new phenomenon in Vienna at the time and received much attention in the newspapers. Gregor Mendel was one of the first to participate in this expensive new trend. The person next to Mendel in the photograph shows a clear resemblance with Johann Nave in the photograph of the founding members of the Natural Science Society of Brünn the same year (see Figs. 1 and 5). The newspaper lists of arrivals in Viennese hotels shows that Johann Nave, was in Vienna when the pleasure train departed. Johann Nave was an internationally acknowledged algae expert with interest in plant reproductive processes. In 1858 Mendel had nominated Nave as a new member of the scientific section of the Agricultural Society. A scientific connection between Mendel and Nave has been conjectured previously; however, evidence was lacking so far. After his early death in 1864, Nave’s scientific library was acquired by the Natural Science Society. It contained books about the latest insights on plant fertilization, and since Mendel’s 1866-paper contains a lengthy footnote about this topic, Mendel and Nave likely discussed this area of Mendel’s research. This may also have been the case during their journey to Paris and London because it was in 1862 that Mendel conducted the final crossing experiments to test his hypothesis about the composition and the random union of pollen and egg cells

Mendel’s journey to Paris and London: context and significance for the origin of genetics.

From a letter Gregor Mendel wrote to his brother-in-law, and a photograph of a large group of people in Paris, it is known that Mendel visited the International Exhibition in London in August 1862. There has been speculation about the status and composition of this travel group; for example, whether it was an official delegation from the city of Brünn. There has also been speculation on whether Mendel visited Charles Darwin on that occasion. We have now found a partial list of participants of the second 1862 pleasure train (Vergnügungszug) from Vienna to Paris and London, which includes Mendel’s name. The names of 158 participants make a partial reconstruction of the travel group possible. Digital newspapers were researched to get more insight into the status, residence, and profession of the participants. Most belonged to the upper-class of the Austrian Empire, among them several citizens of Brünn. Such luxurious all-inclusive pleasure trains were a new phenomenon in Vienna at the time and received much attention in the newspapers. Gregor Mendel was one of the first to participate in this expensive new trend. The person next to Mendel in the photograph shows a clear resemblance with Johann Nave in the photograph of the founding members of the Natural Science Society of Brünn the same year (see Figs. 1 and 5). The newspaper lists of arrivals in Viennese hotels shows that Johann Nave, was in Vienna when the pleasure train departed. Johann Nave was an internationally acknowledged algae expert with interest in plant reproductive processes. In 1858 Mendel had nominated Nave as a new member of the scientific section of the Agricultural Society. A scientific connection between Mendel and Nave has been conjectured previously; however, evidence was lacking so far. After his early death in 1864, Nave’s scientific library was acquired by the Natural Science Society. It contained books about the latest insights on plant fertilization, and since Mendel’s 1866-paper contains a lengthy footnote about this topic, Mendel and Nave likely discussed this area of Mendel’s research. This may also have been the case during their journey to Paris and London because it was in 1862 that Mendel conducted the final crossing experiments to test his hypothesis about the composition and the random union of pollen and egg cells

Mendel’s journey to Paris and London: context and significance for the origin of genetics.

From a letter Gregor Mendel wrote to his brother-in-law, and a photograph of a large group of people in Paris, it is known that Mendel visited the International Exhibition in London in August 1862. There has been speculation about the status and composition of this travel group; for example, whether it was an official delegation from the city of Brünn. There has also been speculation on whether Mendel visited Charles Darwin on that occasion. We have now found a partial list of participants of the second 1862 pleasure train (Vergnügungszug) from Vienna to Paris and London, which includes Mendel’s name. The names of 158 participants make a partial reconstruction of the travel group possible. Digital newspapers were researched to get more insight into the status, residence, and profession of the participants. Most belonged to the upper-class of the Austrian Empire, among them several citizens of Brünn. Such luxurious all-inclusive pleasure trains were a new phenomenon in Vienna at the time and received much attention in the newspapers. Gregor Mendel was one of the first to participate in this expensive new trend. The person next to Mendel in the photograph shows a clear resemblance with Johann Nave in the photograph of the founding members of the Natural Science Society of Brünn the same year (see Figs. 1 and 5). The newspaper lists of arrivals in Viennese hotels shows that Johann Nave, was in Vienna when the pleasure train departed. Johann Nave was an internationally acknowledged algae expert with interest in plant reproductive processes. In 1858 Mendel had nominated Nave as a new member of the scientific section of the Agricultural Society. A scientific connection between Mendel and Nave has been conjectured previously; however, evidence was lacking so far. After his early death in 1864, Nave’s scientific library was acquired by the Natural Science Society. It contained books about the latest insights on plant fertilization, and since Mendel’s 1866-paper contains a lengthy footnote about this topic, Mendel and Nave likely discussed this area of Mendel’s research. This may also have been the case during their journey to Paris and London because it was in 1862 that Mendel conducted the final crossing experiments to test his hypothesis about the composition and the random union of pollen and egg cells

Mendel’s journey to Paris and London: context and significance for the origin of genetics.

From a letter Gregor Mendel wrote to his brother-in-law, and a photograph of a large group of people in Paris, it is known that Mendel visited the International Exhibition in London in August 1862. There has been speculation about the status and composition of this travel group; for example, whether it was an official delegation from the city of Brünn. There has also been speculation on whether Mendel visited Charles Darwin on that occasion. We have now found a partial list of participants of the second 1862 pleasure train (Vergnügungszug) from Vienna to Paris and London, which includes Mendel’s name. The names of 158 participants make a partial reconstruction of the travel group possible. Digital newspapers were researched to get more insight into the status, residence, and profession of the participants. Most belonged to the upper-class of the Austrian Empire, among them several citizens of Brünn. Such luxurious all-inclusive pleasure trains were a new phenomenon in Vienna at the time and received much attention in the newspapers. Gregor Mendel was one of the first to participate in this expensive new trend. The person next to Mendel in the photograph shows a clear resemblance with Johann Nave in the photograph of the founding members of the Natural Science Society of Brünn the same year (see Figs. 1 and 5). The newspaper lists of arrivals in Viennese hotels shows that Johann Nave, was in Vienna when the pleasure train departed. Johann Nave was an internationally acknowledged algae expert with interest in plant reproductive processes. In 1858 Mendel had nominated Nave as a new member of the scientific section of the Agricultural Society. A scientific connection between Mendel and Nave has been conjectured previously; however, evidence was lacking so far. After his early death in 1864, Nave’s scientific library was acquired by the Natural Science Society. It contained books about the latest insights on plant fertilization, and since Mendel’s 1866-paper contains a lengthy footnote about this topic, Mendel and Nave likely discussed this area of Mendel’s research. This may also have been the case during their journey to Paris and London because it was in 1862 that Mendel conducted the final crossing experiments to test his hypothesis about the composition and the random union of pollen and egg cells

From Gregor Mendel's 1865-lectures to his 1866-masterpiece

The two lectures Gregor Mendel gave in the spring of 1865 to the Natural Science Society in Brno can be considered the ultimate origin of genetics. Here we reconstruct these lectures and their settings using digitized historical newspapers, and we compare these to Mendel's 1866-paper "Experiments on plant hybrids". The newspapers explained to their readers that Mendel used the term "Hybriden" in the sense of "Bastarden". Naturalists commonly used the latter term to describe hybrids between species in nature. Mendel's use of "Hybriden" and the avoidance of "Bastarden" in the 1866-paper and early letters to Nägeli regarding Pisum are particular. In English translations, both German words are translated as "hybrids" so that Mendel's differentiated use of words is no longer noticeable. We argue that with the use of "Hybriden" Mendel did not need to take a position on whether the Pisum parental forms were species or varieties, as Mendel considered these as extremes of a continuum. That Mendel probably started his pea crossings as a breeder may also have played a role; "Hybriden" was commonly used in horticulture. Mendel's use of "Hybriden" was unusual for the naturalists in the Natural Science Society, and newspaper reports indicate that this led to confusion. According to the Brünner Zeitung, legumes were not suitable for studies on hybridisation because such interspecific hybrids were rare in nature. However, in his 1866-article, Mendel explained that the garden pea was highly suitable for experimental hybridization due to its flower structure. In the Concluding Remarks of the 1866-article, Mendel showed that his findings were relevant for hybrids between wild species by reviewing the work of Gärtner and Kölreuter. We conclude that it is probable that this section was not part of the lectures and was added later to the paper to accommodate points raised in the discussion after the lectures

NMR Metabolomics Defining Genetic Variation in Pea Seed Metabolites

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy profiling was used to provide an unbiased assessment of changes to the metabolite composition of seeds and to define genetic variation for a range of pea seed metabolites. Mature seeds from recombinant inbred lines, derived from three mapping populations for which there is substantial genetic marker linkage information, were grown in two environments/years and analyzed by non-targeted NMR. Adaptive binning of the NMR metabolite data, followed by analysis of quantitative variation among lines for individual bins, identified the main genomic regions determining this metabolic variability and the variability for selected compounds was investigated. Analysis by t-tests identified a set of bins with highly significant associations to genetic map regions, based on probability (p) values that were appreciably lower than those determined for randomized data. The correlation between bins showing high mean absolute deviation and those showing low p-values for marker association provided an indication of the extent to which the genetics of bin variation might be explained by one or a few loci. Variation in compounds related to aromatic amino acids, branched-chain amino acids, sucrose-derived metabolites, secondary metabolites and some unidentified compounds was associated with one or more genetic loci. The combined analysis shows that there are multiple loci throughout the genome that together impact on the abundance of many compounds through a network of interactions, where individual loci may affect more than one compound and vice versa. This work therefore provides a framework for the genetic analysis of the seed metabolome, and the use of genetic marker data in the breeding and selection of seeds for specific seed quality traits and compounds that have high commercial value

A previously unknown journey by Gregor Mendel to Leipzig in September 1865 and his likely participation in the Botanical Congress in Erfurt

A hitherto unknown visit by Gregor Mendel to Leipzig, Germany, in September 1865 has been discovered in digitized German newspapers. This trip took place after his two lectures on his pea experiments but before the publication of his later famous article on plant hybrids. The probable purpose of this trip was to visit the Second Congress of German Horticulturists and Botanists and Gardening Enthusiasts, combined with the German Exhibition of Agricultural Products in nearby Erfurt. Crosses between plant species and varieties were among the main topics of the Congress. Mendel's participation cannot be proven beyond doubt, but other participants in the Congress arrived in Leipzig at the same time as Mendel and even stayed in the same hotel. In addition, the uniqueness of the Exhibition and the topics covered at the Congress make it very likely that this was the purpose of his trip. We propose that Mendel's participation in the Congress could explain the early publication of an abridged version of Mendel's article in Bamberg and that the Erfurter plant breeder and seed merchant Ernst Benary was acquainted with Mendel's pea experiments