The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee Page 0,45

specified traits; genes could become mutated and thereby specify alternative traits; and genes tended to be chemically or physically linked to each other. Dimly, as if through a veil, geneticists were beginning to visualize patterns and themes: threads, strings, maps, crossings, broken and unbroken lines, chromosomes that carried information in a coded and compressed form. But no one had seen a gene in action or knew its material essence. The central quest of the study of heredity seemed like an object perceived only through its shadows, tantalizingly invisible to science.

If urchins, mealworms, and fruit flies seemed far removed from the world of humans—if the concrete relevance of Morgan’s or Mendel’s findings was ever in doubt—then the events of the violent spring of 1917 proved otherwise. In March that year, as Morgan was writing his papers on genetic linkage in his Fly Room in New York, a volley of brutal popular uprisings ricocheted through Russia, ultimately decapitating the czarist monarchy and culminating in the creation of the Bolshevik government.

At face value, the Russian Revolution had little to do with genes. The Great War had whipped a starving, weary population into a murderous frenzy of discontent. The czar was considered weak and ineffectual. The army was mutinous; the factory workers galled; inflation ran amok. By March 1917, Czar Nicholas II had been forced to abdicate the throne. But genes—and linkage—were certainly potent forces in this history. The czarina of Russia, Alexandra, was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England—and she carried the marks of that heritage: not just the carved obelisk of the nose, or the fragile enamel-like sheen of her skin, but also a gene that caused hemophilia B, a lethal bleeding disorder that had crisscrossed through Victoria’s descendants.

Hemophilia is caused by a single mutation that disables a protein in the clotting of blood. In the absence of this protein, blood refuses to clot—and even a small nick or wound can accelerate into a lethal bleeding crisis. The name of the illness—from Greek haimo (“blood”) and philia (“to like, or love”)—is actually a wry comment on its tragedy: hemophiliacs like to bleed all too easily.

Hemophilia—like white eyes in fruit flies—is a sex-linked genetic illness. Females can be carriers and transmit the gene, but only males are afflicted by the disease. The mutation in the hemophilia gene, which affects the clotting of blood, had likely arisen spontaneously in Queen Victoria at birth. Her eighth child, Leopold, had inherited the gene and died of a brain hemorrhage at age thirty. The gene had also been passed from Victoria to her second daughter, Alice—and then from Alice to her daughter, Alexandra, the czarina of Russia.

In the summer of 1904, Alexandra—still an unsuspecting carrier of the gene—gave birth to Alexei, the czarevitch of Russia. Little is known about the medical history of his childhood, but his attendants must have noticed something amiss: that the young prince bruised all too easily, or that his nosebleeds were often unstoppable. While the precise nature of his ailment was kept secret, Alexei continued to be a pale, sickly boy. He bled frequently and spontaneously. A playful fall, or a nick in his skin—even a bumpy horse ride—could precipitate disaster.

As Alexei grew older, and the hemorrhages more life threatening, Alexandra began to rely on a Russian monk of legendary unctuousness, Grigory Rasputin, who promised to heal the czar-to-be. While Rasputin claimed that he kept Alexei alive using various herbs, salves, and strategically offered prayers, most Russians considered him an opportunistic fraud (he was rumored to be having an affair with the czarina). His continuous presence in the royal family and his growing influence on Alexandra were considered evidence of a crumbling monarchy gone utterly batty.

The economic, political, and social forces that unloosed themselves on the streets of Petrograd and launched the Russian Revolution were vastly more complex than Alexei’s hemophilia or Rasputin’s machinations. History cannot devolve into medical biography—but nor can it stand outside it. The Russian Revolution may not have been about genes, but it was very much about heredity. The disjunction between the prince’s all-too-human genetic inheritance and his all-too-exalted political inheritance must have seemed particularly evident to the critics of the monarchy. The metaphorical potency of Alexei’s illness was also undeniable—symptomatic of an empire gone sick, dependent on bandages and prayers, hemorrhaging at its core. The French had tired of a greedy queen who ate cake. The Russians were fed up with a sickly prince swallowing strange herbs to combat a mysterious illness.

Rasputin was poisoned, shot, slashed,