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This second edition collects Nobel Prize winner Edward B. Lewis’s key publications in the fields of genetics, developmental biology, radiation and cancer. Editor Howard Lipshitz, a close colleague during the last 20 years of Lewis's life, places the papers in their scientific and historical context and provides insight into Lewis's approach to science and the motivations that drove his choice of subject matter.
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GENES, DEVELOPMENT, AND CANCER THE LIFE AND WORK OF EDWARD B. LEWIS E. B. Lewis, 1996 GENES, DEVELOPMENT, AND CANCER THE LIFE AND WORK OF EDWARD B. LEWIS Edited with commentary by HOWARD D. LIPSHITZ Professor and Chair Department of Medical Genetics and Microbiology Graduate Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics Canada Research Chair in Developmental Biology University of Toronto Senior Scientist Program in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute Toronto, Canada 123 A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978–1–4020–6343–5 (PB) ISBN 978–1–4020–6345–9 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Printed on acid-free paper. All rights reserved. C 2007 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. This edition is dedicated to Pamela Harrah Lewis: artist, naturalist, opera connoisseur, friend. The study of the fundamental problems of embryology by experimental methods had almost come to a standstill until two new methods of procedure appeared above the horizon—one the direct application of physico-chemical methods to the developing organism; the other, the application of genetics to problems of development. The combination of these two methods holds for us, at present, I believe the most promising mode of attack on the problems of developmental physiology. Thomas Hunt Morgan (1926) It would therefore be strange if occasionally a mutation did not arise which rendered its cell relatively irresponsive to some influence in the surrounding medium that normally exercised an inhibiting action on its proliferation . . . We should then have a cancer cell. It is no mere hypothesis gene mutations occasionally occur spontaneously in somatic cells . . . It is equally well known that irradiation enormously increases the frequency of these somatic mutations . . . it is but a logical step to conclude that the carcinomas, sarcomas and leukemias arising after irradiation represent mutations induced by the latter . . . Moreover the study of the manner and conditions of mutation production by irradiation should . . . be of some value in relation to the problem of cancer production. Hermann Joseph Muller (1937) CONTENTS Permissions xiii Preface xvii Preface to Second Edition xix INTRODUCTION E. B. Lewis and His Science Biographical Memoir 11 SECTION I: GENES Lewis and the Nature of the Gene 27 Background 27 Invention of the cis–trans test for position effects 28 Position pseudoalleles 30 The bithorax pseudoalleles and the concept of developmental control 32 Gene evolution by tandem duplication 35 From cisvection to transvection 36 Extending the bithorax pseudoalleleic series 37 Genetic versus functional models 39 From genes to gene complexes 41 ix x Contents PAPERS Lewis, E. B. (1939). Star-recessive,