Abstract
I much enjoyed reading the recent article by Marks on Pavlov, but one mistake needs to be corrected. The author proposed that ‘Pavlovwas saved not only by his eminence but also because he showed that organisms were changed by changing their environment, which fitted aCommunist vision of perfecting people by political action’ [1]. In my opinion, more importantly, Pavlov's view fitted scientific facts and was consistent with Darwin's view. Throughout his career, Darwin consistently linked the cause of variation with changes in the environment [2]. In his book, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Darwin wrote: ‘selection does nothing without variability, and this depends in some manner on the act of the surrounding circumstances on the organism’. In a letter to Wagner dated 13 October 1876, Darwin wrote: ‘In my opinion the greatest error which I have committed, has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environment, i.e. food, climate &c., independently of natural selection’. Recently, increasing evidence suggests that environmentally induced or acquired changes in plants and animals can be transmitted to future generations [3].
Marks also stated that ‘Stalin after all lauded Lysenko's bogus “vernalization” of wheat since that seemed to fit a Utopian view of plants’ extreme malleability to change by environmental means while ignoring their genes; it was foolhardy for Soviet geneticists to point to that emperor's lack of clothes' [1]. I argue that vernalization is not bogus but a true scientific phenomenon and a valuable agricultural technique. Lysenko's work on vernalization caused a great stir in 1932–33. Until now Lysenko was one of the main references in textbooks of plant physiology. Vernalization is not only of great interest theoretically, but also effective in agricultural practice since it ensures fructification while forestalling frost damage. The term vernalization, which derives from Lysenko, is still an extant scientific term and frequently appears in many prestigious journals [4]. Lysenko's claim of the conversion of winter wheat and spring wheat, was not only believed by Darwin, but was also fully confirmed by several independent groups of scientists [3]. Recently, the relationship between vernalization and epigenetics has been extensively documented. It has been indicated that environmental factors, such as temperature, can influence epigenetic marks such as methylation. There is evidence that vernalization results in DNA demethylation that induces flowering, thus shedding new light on the epigenetic basis of vernalization [5]. It has been accepted that the epigenetic inheritance system enables the environmentally induced phenotypes to be transmitted between generations.