The Gene 



L. J. STABLER 



Reprinted by publisher's permission from Sci- 

 ence, vol. 120, 1954, pp. 811-819. 



This paper by Stadler is interesting in several respects. As the 

 editors of Science cormnented in a footnote to the original paper, 

 ''Dr. Stadler, before his death o?i 12 May, asked that this paper be 

 sent to Science. It is the valediction, and a re?narkable one, of a great 

 geneticist.'" It can be considered the distillate of Stadler's long a?id 

 successful years of genetic investigatiofi, a?7d is valuable even if it 

 were no more than that. 



But it is considerably more. For Stadler registers here his objec- 

 tions to the kind of research that has beefi done 07i the gene and its 

 actions, points out some of the basic fallacies of current concepts in 

 his opinion, and indicates njoays and vieans through which a changed 

 viewpoint might be developed. It is too early to say what impact the 

 paper will have on genetic research. Certainly some of the sugges- 

 tions made by Stadler cannot be implemented with the research tools 

 currently in use. But his ideas are provocative, and his recommenda- 

 tiofis deserve to be tested. It woidd be good for genetics, and equally 

 so for all other fields of biology, if more of those workers with long 

 years of experience would set down their accumulated concepts a?id 

 research ideas as retirement approaches, as did Stadler. All too often 

 a man's accumulated knowledge dies with him. 



The central problem of biology by which the syntheses proceed that 



is the physical nature of living sub- provide the materials for growth. The 



stance. It is this that gives drive and second is the behavior of the genie 



zest to the study of the gene, for the substance, which apparently guides 



investigation of the behavior of genie these reactions. It is carried in the 



substance seems at present our most chromosomes in fine strands, which 



direct approach to this problem. together make up only a minute por- 



Current knowledge of the behavior tion of the substance of the cell. These 



of living cells presents two striking strands are differentiated along their 



pictures. The first is the almost in- length into hundreds of segments of 



credibly delicate balance of chemical distinctive action, and, therefore, pre- 



reactions occurring in the living cell, sumably of distinctive constitution, 



by which energy is made available and which we speak of as the genes. The 

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