The Evolution Engineers: Plant Breeding with Colchicine in the Laboratory and at Home, 1937–1950

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org

In the late 1930s biologists developed a chemical technique that was widely understood to enable plant breeders to engineer new types of plants “to order.” Application of the chemical colchicine was found to result in a doubling of the chromosome number in many species. Because biologists understood this process to be one mode of evolution in plants, they assumed colchicine would enable them to achieve greater control over evolutionary events and therefore to produce new, improved types more quickly and effectively than ever before.

This talk will present a history of interest in and enthusiasm for plant breeding using the chemical colchicine, focusing on the years immediately following discovery of its effect on plant chromosomes. This history offers insight into both the development of genetic technologies and their popular reception. News of the colchicine method spread widely, as did excitement about the potential new profession of “genetics engineer” or “evolution engineer.” Moreover, because colchicine was fairly easy to obtain and the methods for its use straightforward enough to be presented in just a few paragraphs of a newspaper or magazine article, many non-scientists initiated their own colchicine-breeding experiments in their homes and gardens.

Helen Anne Curry is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in the History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. Her dissertation, “Accelerating Evolution, Engineering Life,” explores the history of several early techniques of genetic modification.