page_title: Pangenesis
section_title: Darwin
hierarchical_section_title: Pangenesis / Theory / Darwin
caption_attribution_description: English: Darwin's description of tissue growth in pangenesis theory from Variation, visualized
context_page_description: Pangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity, in which he proposed that each part of the body continually emitted its own type of small organic particles called gemmules that aggregated in the gonads, contributing heritable information to the gametes. He presented this 'provisional hypothesis' in his 1868 work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, intending it to fill what he perceived as a major gap in evolutionary theory at the time. The etymology of the word comes from the Greek words pan and genesis or genos. Pangenesis mirrored ideas originally formulated by Hippocrates and other pre-Darwinian scientists, but built off of new concepts such as cell theory, explaining cell development as beginning with gemmules which were specified to be necessary for the occurrence of new growths in an organism, both in initial development and regeneration. It also accounted for regeneration and the Lamarckian concept of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as a body part altered by the environment would produce altered gemmules. This made Pangenesis popular among the neo-Lamarckian school of evolutionary thought.
context_section_description: Darwin's pangenesis theory attempted to explain the process of sexual reproduction, inheritance of traits, and complex developmental phenomena such as cellular regeneration in a unified mechanistic structure. Yongshen Liu wrote that in modern terms, pangenesis deals with issues of "dominance inheritance, graft hybridization, reversion, xenia, telegony, the inheritance of acquired characters, regeneration and many groups of facts pertaining to variation, inheritance and development." Mechanistically, Darwin proposed pangenesis to occur through the transfer of organic particles which he named 'gemmules.' Gemmules, which he also sometimes referred to as plastitudes}, pangenes, granules, or germs, were supposed to be shed by the organs of the body and carried in the bloodstream to the reproductive organs where they accumulated in the germ cells or gametes. Their accumulation was thought to occur by some sort of a 'mutual affinity.' Each gemmule was said to be specifically related to a certain body part- as described, they did not contain information about the entire organism. The different types were assumed to be dispersed through the whole body, and capable of self-replication given 'proper nutriment'. When passed on to offspring via the reproductive process, gemmules were thought to be responsible for developing into each part of an organism and expressing characteristics inherited from both parents. Darwin thought this to occur in a literal sense: he explained cell proliferation to progress as gemmules to bind to more developed cells of their same character and mature. In this sense, the uniqueness of each individual would be due to their unique mixture of their parents' gemmules, and therefore characters. Similarity to one parent over the other could be explained by a quantitative superiority of one parent's gemmules. Yongshen Lu points out that Darwin knew of cells' ability to multiply by self-division, so it is unclear how Darwin supposed the two proliferation mechanisms to relate to each other. He did clarify in a later statement that he had always supposed gemmules to only bind to and proliferate from developing cells, not mature ones. Darwin hypothesized that gemmules might be able to survive and multiply outside of the body in a letter to J. D. Hooker in 1870.
  Some gemmules were thought to remain dormant for generations, whereas others were routinely expressed by all offspring. Every child was built up from selective expression of the mixture of the parents and grandparents' gemmules coming from either side. Darwin likened this to gardening: a flowerbed could be sprinkled with seeds "most of which soon germinate, some lie for a period dormant, whilst others perish." He did not claim gemmules were in the blood, although his theory was often interpreted in this way. Responding to Fleming Jenkin's review of On the Origin of Species, he argued that pangenesis would permit the preservation of some favourable variations in a population so that they wouldn't die out through blending.
  Darwin thought that environmental effects that caused altered characteristics would lead to altered gemmules for the affected body part. The altered gemmules would then have a chance of being transferred to offspring, since they were assumed to be produced throughout an organisms life. Thus, pangenesis theory allowed for the Lamarckian idea of transmission of characteristics acquired through use and disuse. Accidental gemmule development in incorrect parts of the body could explain deformations and the 'monstrosities' Darwin cited in Variation.
caption: Darwin's description of cell proliferation using pangenesis theory in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
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