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HAUNTING IMAGE. "While most of the more serious journalists pulled back from the idea that Loeb was "manufacturing" life through artificial parthenogenesis, the image of Loeb as Faust or Frankenstein continued through the rest of the decade." https://lnkd.in/eQf5Evv View in LinkedIn

TABOO LINE. "The term “triploid block” has been coined to describe the regular observation that interploidy crosses, specifically between diploids and tetraploids, often result in early hybrid inviability and sterility." https://lnkd.in/es_dhAz View in LinkedIn

THE ELUSIVE PHANTOM. Loeb "told Snyder that his purpose was "to go to the bottom of things. I wanted to take life in my hands and play with it." Snyder described him reaching out, "as if to catch this elusive phantom," as he spoke. "I wanted to handle it in my laboratory as I would any other chemical reaction-to start it, stop it, vary it, study it under every condition, to direct it at my will!" https://lnkd.in/eQf5Evv View in LinkedIn

SPECIES BARRIERS. "Odd-ploidy levels represent a significant challenge to overcome in the formation of polyploids because interploidy crosses often have strong postzygotic reproductive barriers, severely reducing hybrid viability and fertility. However, evidence from both natural and experimental systems has shown that interploidy crosses can sometimes produce odd-ploidy offspring that are viable." https://lnkd.in/es_dhAz View in LinkedIn

ORIGIN OF LIFE. "But we have drawn a great step nearer to the chemical theory of life and may already see ahead of us the day when a scientist, experimenting with chemicals in a test tube, may see them unite and form a substance which shall live and move and reproduce itself." (Loeb). https://lnkd.in/eQf5Evv View in LinkedIn

ODD-PLOIDY TRANSIENTS. "When the formation of polyploids involves fusion of gametes with different ploidy levels (e.g., reduced and unreduced gametes, or between a diploid and a tetraploid), an individual with an unbalanced ploidy level (e.g., a triploid) will be formed. In most cases, these odd-ploidy individuals are a transient phase in polyploid formation, leading to the eventual production of higher ploidy, stable lineages such as tetraploids and hexaploids." https://lnkd.in/es_dhAz View in LinkedIn

ARTIFICIAL REPRODUCTION. "The less a scientist says about that now the better. It is a wonderful subject, and in many ways an awful one. That the human species may be made artificially to reproduce itself by the withdrawal of chemical restraint by other than natural means is a matter we do not like to contemplate." (Loeb). https://lnkd.in/eQf5Evv View in LinkedIn

MECHANISMS OF PLOIDY. "Polyploids (individuals carrying more than two sets of chromosomes) can originate through a variety of pathways. These include the somatic doubling of chromosomes in meristematic tissue during mitosis and, perhaps more commonly, unreduced gametes." https://lnkd.in/es_dhAz View in LinkedIn

DEVILS AND DETAILS. "Hybridization between diploids and tetraploids can lead to new allopolyploid species, often via a triploid intermediate. Viable triploids are often produced asymmetrically, with greater success observed for “maternal-excess” crosses where the mother has a higher ploidy than the father." https://lnkd.in/es_dhAz View in LinkedIn

SPIN CYCLE CENTRALITY. "I suggest that this perspective is central to much of plant biology, a proposal bolstered by the realization that the size and functional diversification of contemporary plant multi-gene family structures, gene expression patterns, and genic contexts all represent the culmination of this repeated “wash–rinse–repeat” cycle of polyploidization followed by nonrandom and incomplete diploidization." http://www.amjbot.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ajb.1500320 View in LinkedIn