Darwin had to travel around the world for six years to sense that things are infinitely more complex than they appear.
It took me only a moment: observing the emergence of a butterfly hatching from a cocoon that started as a caterpillar and wonder why it happened.
When I was small I thought it was due to the mulberry I fed to the caterpillars (it showed me that to grow you have to eat) ...
[Smiles] That unique fact led me to wonder, as a researcher, some questions about the metamorphosis and development of living beings. In science it is important to identify the fundamental problem of what one is investigating. I wanted to dive into the why and the how of cell differentiation. First I began studying the genetic basis for body pattern development of metazoans. Afterwards I studied the phenomena of transdetermination in the imaginal discs of Drosophila melanogaster and drew up a series of predictions where I erred completely.
Nobody is perfect.
Not only that, but in biology, one can never make predictions. I took the attitude of an engineer and, armed with a substantial database, I concluded that the fly required more antennas than it used, until, astonished, I discovered a mutation that transforms the antennae of the head of the fly in a couple of middle leg. Nature does not follow logical rules. Add pears with apples or oranges; in many cases it does not act according to predictable patterns.
Hence you proceeded with caution to your most important discovery: the homeotic sequence.
The homeotic sequence [homeobox] provided the key to understand the decisions about cell fate which I had been trying to decipher for a long time.
In recent years, genes have given us many clues about the origin of species, but some people still think that living things are the work of a divine purpose.
In recent decades we have only fleshed out an idea that Darwin only managed to sketch out, that of the evolution that takes place independently, haphazardly, without predetermination. Throughout the years, perhaps centuries, organisms are selected that are increasingly more perfect (in the sense of complexity) and capable of adapting to a particular physical environment. The best suited ones prevail; those that adapt worst become extinct. It would be a cruel plan if it were a plan, but it is not, there is no intention, and also, the cycle runs with many surprises.
A WISE MAN OF LIFE Oblivious to the eschatological game of laurels and medals, merits and Nobel prizes, Gehring humbly addressed his Cell Biology Laboratory Biozentrum at the University of Basel.
However, the international profile of his findings and discoveries led him to receive honorary degrees in many associations. "I love the academic life and I like communicating with other universities”, says the wise man of Zurich, member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences in America, the London Royal Society and institutions of the same rank in France, Sweden and Germany. Author of 250 publications and has been cited in 22,000 scientific articles.
As a researcher, Gehring is one of the main drivers of genetics as a scientific specialty. He obtained his PhD in 1965, and deciphered the homeotic sequence, a set of similar and distinct genes that remain unchanged throughout the evolutionary process; something like the first mark of existence. It is known that this sequence controls the development process of the body pattern of almost all living beings, including humans, and their discovery was key to interpret the genetic control of embryonic development.
Curious by nature, Gehring began studying at the end of the last century the evolution of the vision in different animals, and concluded that the morphological features alone did not explain the transition from a very primitive vision model to a more evolved one. It was then that he speculated on the involvement of genes and identified a gene key in the development of the sense of sight, Pax6, which we owe the determination of a photoreception (sensitivity to light) that we carry genetically since very primitive unicellular beings (bacteria) developed photosynthesis. In the words of Gehring, "this data on the monophyletic origin of eyes fully corroborate the intuitions expressed in Darwin's Origin of the Species, 150 years ago.
