Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

C. Mendel's Legacy

Halberg, F.; Cornelissen, G.; Matalova, G.; Siegelova, J.; Sonkowsky, R; Chibisov, S.M.; Ulmer, W.; Wilson, D.; Revilla, M.; Katinas, G.S.; Homolka, P.; Dusek, J.; Fiser, B.; Sanchez de la Pena, S.; Schwartzkopff, O.; Beaty, L.A.

C. Mendel's Legacy Thumbnail


Authors

F. Halberg

G. Cornelissen

G. Matalova

J. Siegelova

R Sonkowsky

S.M. Chibisov

W. Ulmer

D. Wilson

M. Revilla

G.S. Katinas

P. Homolka

J. Dusek

B. Fiser

S. Sanchez de la Pena

O. Schwartzkopff

L.A. Beaty



Contributors

F. Halberg
Editor

T. Kenner
Editor

B. Fiser
Editor

J. Siegelova
Editor

Abstract

This paper reviews the development of chronobiology, the science (logos) of life (bios) in time (chronos), and of chronomics, against the background of Mendel's contributions far beyond genetics. In keeping with Mendel the meteorologist, we document for rhythms that light and food are not the only external switches. The "master switch", light, can be overridden more often and more critically than we visualize by feeding (3) or by a magnetic storm (4). Very important hypothalamic "oscillators" (5) are not the only internal mechanism of rhythms. Time structures, chronomes, reside in every biological unit, pro- or eukaryote, Figure 2 (6; cf. 5, 7). Chronomes in us have a strong genetic component which, in turn, entered the genome in response to environmental chronomes, explored meteorologically by Mendel. The more remote environmental origin of rhythms and their less remote genetic aspect both qualify biological chronomes as the legacy of Mendel the meteorologist as well as the geneticist. Our continued resonance with the environment renders an exophased endocycling even more interesting. The need for coordinated physical and biological monitoring, the topic of a project on The BIOsphere and the COSmos, briefly BIOCOS, to complement genomics, can also be viewed as the legacy of Mendel the meteorologist/cartographer. Some of Mendel's meteorological data were meta-chrono-analyzed. Mendel himself published more often on meteorology than on what became genetics. His legacies of paraphernalia are those of a meteorologist. Despite failing his examination for certification as a regular teacher in 1850 -- his lowest marks were in biology and geology (!) -- and although he reportedly never passed his teacher's license examination, Mendel started the science that distinguished the rules of dominant vs. recessive behavior and eventually led to the cloning of organisms and the debate about stem cells, again raising the question "What is life?" (1, 8, 9). Mendel is the de facto teacher par excellence of this generation of genomics, proteomics and nanochemistry by virtue of what became not only genetics but also chronomics in Brno. Our advocacy of education in instrumented self-help for chronobiologic literacy includes genetics and ecology, and qualifies as Mendelian. Chronobiologic literacy in everyday health care serves for the quantification of normalcy. By resolving chronomes in the normal range, we act positively rather than defining health negatively and only qualitatively (as the absence of disease, i.e., of deviations outside that range) summarized as % morbidity and % mortality only for a population, not for the individual. From these several viewpoints that have as a common denominator focus upon the usual, we view Johann Gregor Mendel as a chronobiologist. We view chronobiology in a broad perspective of its now thoroughly documented roots in our genes and via our genome in the cosmoi, as they were when and where life began and as they changed from then to now. Evolution, ecology, genetics and chemistry, the legacies of Darwin, Haeckel, Mendel and Lavoisier respectively, and their transdisciplinary fusion by Brückner, Egeson, Norman Lockyer, W.J.S. Lockyer, Chizhevsky and Vernadsky in the spirit of Dokuchaev, like everything else, occur in time. They are part and parcel of chronobiology and of a much broader temporal perspective from chronomics, an overdue transdisciplinary cartography of the as-yet unknown.

Citation

Halberg, F., Cornelissen, G., Matalova, G., Siegelova, J., Sonkowsky, R., Chibisov, S., …Beaty, L. (2009). C. Mendel's Legacy. In F. Halberg, T. Kenner, B. Fiser, & J. Siegelova (Eds.), Symposium on non-invasive methods in cardiology 2009 (77-111). Masaryk University, Faculty of Medicine

Publication Date Jan 1, 2009
Deposit Date Jun 11, 2010
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Pages 77-111
Book Title Symposium on non-invasive methods in cardiology 2009.
Publisher URL http://static.msi.umn.edu/rreports/2009/304.pdf

Files




You might also like



Downloadable Citations