Irma Andersson-Kottö | |
|---|---|
 Irma in her fern glasshouse at the John Innes Horticultural Institute | |
| Born | January 1, 1895 |
| Died | July 7, 1985 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | Swedish |
| Alma mater | University of Stockholm, University of London |
| Known for | Pioneering work in fern genetics |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Botany, Genetics |
| Institutions | John Innes Horticultural Institution, Wenner-Gren Institute |
Irma Andersson-Kottö (1 January 1895 [1] – 7 July 1985) was a Swedish botanist and a pioneer in fern genetics. [2]
Andersson graduated from the University of Stockholm. In 1919 she wrote to William Bateson and joined the then John Innes Horticultural Institution (now the John Innes Centre) [3] as a volunteer worker, where later she was appointed as a student. [4] From 1934-38 she undertook her PhD at the University of London. [5]
Andersson studied inheritance in ferns [6] [7] and was the first to introduce the use of an agar-based growth medium for the experimental study of fern gametophytes. [2] Her study of apospory and polyploid series in Asplenium scolopendrium was important in understanding the origin and development of the alternation of generations, a key concept in plant development. [8] [9] She was invited to join the British Pteridological Society as an honour member but elected to join as an honour subscribing member. After her time in the UK studying British ferns, she returned to Sweden to work at Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm. [10] More recently some of her hypothesis on the dominance of certain alleles [11] in ferns were confirmed experimentally. [12]
Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic information of their parents. Through heredity, variations between individuals can accumulate and cause species to evolve by natural selection. The study of heredity in biology is genetics.
William Bateson was an English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns. His 1894 book Materials for the Study of Variation was one of the earliest formulations of the new approach to genetics.
Theophilus Shickel Painter was an American zoologist best known for his work on the structure and function of chromosomes, especially the sex-determination genes X and Y in humans. He was the first to discover that human sex was determined by an X/Y heteromorphic chromosomal pair mechanism. He also carried out work in identifying genes in fruit flies (Drosophila). His work exploited the giant polytene chromosomes in the salivary glands of Drosophila and other Dipteran larvae. Painter was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1938 and the American Philosophical Society in 1939.
In population genetics, the Wahlund effect is a reduction of heterozygosity in a population caused by subpopulation structure. Namely, if two or more subpopulations are in a Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium but have different allele frequencies, the overall heterozygosity is reduced compared to if the whole population was in equilibrium. The underlying causes of this population subdivision could be geographic barriers to gene flow followed by genetic drift in the subpopulations.
Sten Gösta William Wahlund was a Swedish statistician, race biologist and politician. He is best known for first identifying the Wahlund effect, that subpopulations with different allele frequencies cause reduced heterozygosity than what is expected from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium.
Asplenium scolopendrium, commonly known as the hart's-tongue fern, is an evergreen fern in the family Aspleniaceae native to the Northern Hemisphere.
Albert Levan was a Swedish botanist and geneticist.
Nullisomic is a genetic condition involving the lack of both the normal chromosomal pairs for a species (2n-2). Humans with this condition will not survive.
The Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn was the official journal of the Natural History Society in Brno, published from 1861-1920. A free archive of the journal is available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Jens Christen (Christian) Clausen was a Danish-American botanist, geneticist, and ecologist. He is considered a pioneer in the field of ecological and evolutionary genetics of plants.
Hereditas is a scientific journal concerning genetics. It has been published since 1920 by the Mendelska sällskapet i Lund. In its long history it has published important papers in the field of genetics, including the first discovery of the correct human chromosome count by Joe Hin Tijo and Albert Levan in 1956. In the post-genomic era, the scope of Hereditas has evolved to include any research on genomic analysis.
Muriel Onslow was a British biochemist, born in Birmingham, England. She studied the inheritance of flower colour in the common snapdragon Antirrhinum and the biochemistry of anthocyanin pigment molecules. She attended the King Edward VI High School in Birmingham and then matriculated at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1900. At Cambridge she majored in botany. Onslow later worked within Bateson's genetic group and then Frederick Gowland Hopkins biochemical group in Cambridge, providing her with expertise in biochemical genetics for investigating the inheritance and biosynthesis of petal colour in Antirrhinum. She was one of the first women appointed as a lecturer at Cambridge, after moving to the Biochemistry department.
Florence Margaret Durham was a British geneticist at Cambridge in the early 1900s and an advocate of the theory of Mendelian inheritance, at a time when it was still controversial. She was part of an informal school of genetics at Cambridge led by her brother-in-law William Bateson. Her work on the heredity of coat colours in mice and canaries helped to support and extend Mendel's law of heredity. It is also one of the first examples of epistasis.
Caroline Pellew was a British geneticist who made significant contributions to knowledge of the laws of inheritance in various organisms including peas.
Hedda Maria Emerence Adelaïde Elisabeth Ekman, née Åkerhielm, credited as Elisabeth Ekman was a Swedish botanist, noted for her study of the genus Draba.
Dorothea De Winton (1891–1982) was a plant scientist and one of the first female geneticists. She worked at the John Innes Horticultural Institution for over 20 years.
Kesara Margrét Anamthawat-Jónsson is professor of botany and plant genetics at the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, School of Engineering and Natural Sciences, University of Iceland.
Lettice Digby was a British cytologist, botanist and malacologist. Her work provided the first demonstration that a fertile polyploid hybrid had formed between two cultivated plant species.
Nils Herman Nilsson-Ehle was a Swedish plant breeder and geneticist. He was a professor at Lund University and was also a proponent of eugenics.
Alice Elizabeth Gairdner (1873–1954) was a British plant scientist, geneticist and cytologist.