1910s Timeline - John Innes Centre

1928 C D Darlington completes
important work on polyploidy
and on Oenothera
C D Darlington completes two
important papers on polyploidy
and Oenothera; these are
published in Nature and the
Journal of Genetics respectively.
On polyploidy Darlington
records that his very first idea
came in December 1926 when
he was travelling to work on the
London underground with Alice
Gairdner, one of Bateson’s
assistants and with whom he
collaborated on Campanula.
They were discussing the effect
of polyploidy on fertility,
particularly on the tetraploid
cultivar of Campanula percisifolia
‘Telham Beauty’ and the hybrid
Primula kewensis. He formulated
what became known later as
‘Darlington’s rule’: that there is a
negative correlation between
the fertility of the polyploid and
that of the diploid from which it
arose.
This rule became the basis for
the study of fertility in species,
hybrids and diploids and
polyploids until it was added to
by Ralph Riley whose research
on wheat identified specific
genes affecting chromosome
pairing.
Darlington’s paper on the
evening primrose Oenothera
lamarckiana united this
seemingly anomalous plant with
Mendelism, the chromosome
theory, and his own theories of
meiosis.
On Darlington’s research see
also:
C D Darlington, ‘Polyploids and
polyploidy’, Nature, 124 (1929):
62-64; 98-100
C D Darlington, ‘Ring formation
in Oenothera and other genera’,
Journal of Genetics, 20 (1929):
345-63.
Dan Lewis, ‘Cyril Dean
Darlington 1903-1981’,
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows
of the Royal Sociey, 29 (1983):
113-157, esp. pp. 137-40.
1928 Frederick Griffith’s
experiments reveal a
‘transforming principle’
British medical officer and
geneticist Frederick Griffith,
working in the Ministry of
Health’s labs on a vaccine
against pneumonia infections
following ‘Spanish flu’, shows
that some component of heatkilled
virulent bacteria can
‘transform’ a non-virulent strain
to become virulent. The
unknown ‘component’ involved
is later (1944) identified as DNA
See: Biography and significance
of Griffith’s work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr
ederick_Griffith
1929 C D Darlington travels to
Iraq, Iran and Russia
In November 1928 C D
Darlington is called to the
Director’s office and told that he
is not co-operating satisfactorily
with other members of staff
(probably C L Huskins). For this
reason he is to be sent to Persia
to collect tulips (and anything
else of interest) at the joint
expense of the Empire
Marketing Board and the John
Innes, in the company (or
custody) of an experienced
botanist.
In February 1929 Darlington
embarks at Tilbury en route to
Iraq and Persia to collect Prunus
and Tulipa species with John
MacQueen Cowan, a retired
Indian Forest Officer working for
the Royal Botanic Gardens at
Kew. Cowan’s goal was to
collect 5000 specimens of plants
in flower, to be dried and sent
back to Kew labelled ‘Coll.
Cowan and Darlington’. Though
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