Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 – 1884) the priest and botanist whose work laid the foundations for the study of genetics.
Archives Hulton/Getty Images/Max Posner/NPR
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Archives Hulton/Getty Images/Max Posner/NPR
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 – 1884) the priest and botanist whose work laid the foundations for the study of genetics.
Archives Hulton/Getty Images/Max Posner/NPR
When the man known as “the father of genetics” turns 200, how do you celebrate?
By digging up his body and sequencing his DNA, of course.
That’s what a team of scientists from the Czech Republic did this year to celebrate Gregor Mendel, a scientist and brother whose experiments in the mid-1800s laid the foundations of modern genetics.
Mendel lived and worked in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. As 2022 marks the bicentennial of Mendel’s birth, local researchers there — where Mendel remains something of a hometown hero — have been looking for ways to remember the man and honor the moment. Possibilities included a festival, a scientific conference and a statue.
Astronomer Jiří Dušek, director of the Brno Observatory and Planetarium, wondered if the founder of genetics had ever undergone genetic testing.
So that was the start, he said Sarka Pospisilovaa geneticist who is also vice-rector for research at Masaryk University in Brno.
At first, she says the idea of analyzing Mendel’s genes seemed “crazy.”
Still, Pospíšilová went around to different scholars at the university asking what might be possible.
“I asked anthropologists who had experiences with analyzing the remains of various historical people,” she recalls. She also consulted archaeologists.
Exhuming Mendel from his grave in Brno and performing genetic testing on his remains proved to be a feasible project – as long as they could get permission from the Augustinians. It is the religious order to which Mendel belonged and with which he lives: the Augustinian tomb in the central cemetery of the city would contain the body of Mendel.
Local religious leaders consulted with the Augustinians in Prague, their bishop, and finally the Augustinians in Rome. Eventually, permission was granted.
He had an extraordinarily large brain 🧠 and was 168cm tall.🚶♂️We are talking about the founder of genetics, Gregor Johann Mendel. His remains are currently being studied by scientists at Masaryk University. pic.twitter.com/2TZEUNbrPQ
— BrnoNewsCTV (@BrnoNewsCTV) November 4, 2021
Philippe Pardya molecular biologist on the research team, felt that a heavy sense of responsibility came with participating in this effort.
“Gregor Mendel is a person who taught the first genetics course in college,” Pardy explains. “Everyone thinks he’s very important, especially here in Brno. He’s kind of a role model…who was at the start of everything we do.”
Mendel was ahead of his time in the way he used mathematics to study the inheritance patterns of pea plants when looking at things like flower color and plant height, Pardy says.
“He analyzed a set of about 25,000 plants to get the right numbers and create the formulas,” Pardy explains. And so in that regard, he was also kind of a visionary and a step ahead.
Mendel’s plant experiments were known and respected during his lifetime, but his fame really took off after 1900, when geneticists rediscovered his work and realized its implications.
“No one at the time, including Mendel I think, suspected that his work would be so groundbreaking in terms of major scientific theory,” said Daniel Fairbanksplant breeder and author of a book entitled Gregor Mendel: his life and legacy.
The excavation of Mendel’s tomb revealed five coffins, stacked on top of each other. This was a bit surprising, given that the grave marker only bore the names of four Augustinian friars.
Mendel’s coffin appeared to be the metal one at the bottom. It was lined with journals from shortly before his death, which seemed quite conclusive. Still, Pardy says they wanted even better proof that this coffin contained Mendel’s remains.
“We actually came up with the idea of going through his personal possessions because we knew we needed reference material to confirm his identity,” Pardy explains.
Local museum curators allowed them to remove items such as Mendel’s microscopes, his glasses, written records of his weather measurements, and a cigarette case. The team also carefully searched through Mendel’s favorite books and, in a book on astronomy, found a hair.
By examining the DNA from it all and comparing it to the DNA from the skeleton, they were certain they had found Mendel’s body.
Sequencing of his DNA genetic variants revealed linked to diabetes, heart problems and kidney disease. The variant that intrigued Fairbanks the most was in a gene that has been linked to epilepsy and neurological problems.
“He suffered all his life from some sort of psychological or neurological disorder that caused him to have very severe nervous breakdowns,” says Fairbanks. “It may well have been an inherited condition – and it was a fascinating discovery that these scientists made.”
Fairbanks thought about how Mendel would feel if disturbed in his grave to satisfy the curiosity of today’s scientists.
“I tend to think, from what I know of him, he might very well have been happy about it,” Fairbanks says. But of course we can’t ask him directly.
Pospíšilová also leans towards this theory.
“We think he would be happy. We know he was very enthusiastic about all kinds of research,” she says, noting that just before his death, Mendel asked for a thorough autopsy to be performed.
“He wasn’t against researching his own body,” she says.
Even though Mendel knew nothing about DNA or the role it played in the patterns of heredity he observed so closely, she says, in all likelihood “he wouldn’t mind being part of the research , even after his death.
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