Genome Entry 2

Chromosome 3
History

Ridley brings up Dr. Archibald Garrold, a historical figure, who published the inborn errors of metabolism. He was working with a disease called alkaptonuria and made some insightful discoveries. He later published his eerily accurate hypothesis in the inborn errors of metabolism in 1902. In this, he predicted that the inborn erros of metabolism were caused by genetic mutations. He first assumed that each gene only was able to make one chemical catalyst and he called the mutations a loss or malfunction of an enzyme. He also discovered that the proteins managed nearly all the functions in a human body. Most of the readers of his book missed his point, including Mendel and Darwin. They both produced different theories which were eventually combined into one in 1918. Finally, discoveries later on showed that genes were the foundation for proteins after much study of mutations.