We are just as far from having a thorough chemical acquaintance with the albuminous compounds to which plasm belongs.
They are phylogenetic outcomes of the manifold differentiations which the originally homogeneous and structureless plasm has undergone in the course of many millions of years.
There is usually a large number of them in the plasm of the plant-cells.
This sexual affinity must be based on the chemical properties of the plasm of the copulating cells, but it seems to show a good deal of vagueness in its effect.
The slow displacement of the molecules of plasm which is at the bottom of these plasma-movements also causes a variety of external changes of form in simple naked cells.
However, this capacity of absorption has definite limits in each variety of plasm; living plasm is not soluble in water, but absolutely resists the penetration of any water beyond this limit.
I regard the sharp distinction between body-plasm and germ-plasm as an interesting biological myth.
Now, although I value highly Professor Weismann's luminous researches, and read with interest his ingenious speculations, I cannot but regard his doctrine of the continuity of germ-plasm as a distinctly retrograde step.
For the ovum, besides being a germ-bearer, is a specialized cell, and its special form is determined by the body-plasm it contains.
Is it the germ-plasm or the body-plasm that is influenced by external stresses?
The body-plasm dies; but the life of the germ-plasm is, under appropriate conditions, indefinitely continuous.
I do not know that Professor Weismann has anywhere distinctly stated what he conceives to be the relation of body-plasm and germ-plasm in the protozoa.
With the nucleus of the second polar body, as many different kinds of plasm are removed from the egg as will be afterwards introduced by the sperm-nucleus.
This germ-plasm can give rise to, but cannot originate from, body-plasm.
On account of this weakness of the inhibitor in the germ-plasm of No.
Only in one case out of the 250 or more in which that germ-plasm is used is the development of the tail completely stopped.
And this is effected, as I am inclined to believe, through such profound processes of selection in the interior of the germ-plasm as I have endeavored to sketch to you to-day under the title of germinal selection.
I conceive that even on the assumption of my constitutional elements (Anlagen) the germ-plasm is complex enough, and that there is no need of increasing its complexity to a fabulous extent.
It must also not be forgotten that some process or other must take place in the germ-plasm when an organ becomes rudimentary, and that as the result of it this organ, and only this organ, must disappear.
He seeks the essential cause of evolution in the constitution of the plasm of organisms.
The theory is ingenious, but seems to sail rather near Pangenesis (as do many of the latter amendments of germ-plasm by W.
The fact that the mother furnishes the germ cell with nutritive plasm and that she nourishes it for a considerable time does not increase the number of maternal determinants nor their capability of development.
Since in the phylogenetic development of the plasma the thicker idioplasm is differentiated from the more fluid soma-plasm (Sec.
These results tend to show that factors are not indivisible units, and segregation is rather the difficulty of chromatin or germ plasm from different race uniting together.
Specific excretory products of pigment in the skin may stimulate the pigment determinants in the germ-plasm to vigour.
We look to him for a proof of the discontinuity of somato-plasm much more than we do for a proof of the continuity of germ-plasm.
By surrendering his doctrine of the absolute stability of germ-plasm on the one hand, and of its perpetual[68] continuity on the other, Weismann has greatly improved his theory of heredity.
Professor Weismann’s theory of Germ-plasm is fundamentally based upon the great distinction, in respect of their transmissibility, between characters that are congenital and characters that are acquired.
One might represent the germ-plasm by the metaphor of a long creeping root-stock from which plants arise at intervals, these latter representing the individuals of successive generations.
There is, therefore, continuity of the germ-plasm from one generation to another.
We are the trustees of the racial germ plasmthat we carry.
Stockard has also shown in mice, on which he has experimented, that the effect of alcohol on the germ-plasm is distinctly injurious.
Sidenote: Trustees of the Racial Germ-plasm] First, we can carry through life uninjured the essential germ plasm which has been entrusted to our care.
He did not go into the details of his construction from a plasm new to biology.
When you were little more than a mass of plasm inside your mother, I put a medicine in her blood that I had discovered.
It is the sacred duty of every individual, moreover, to see that the maximal possibilities of his own germ-plasm are not lowered by vicious or unwholesome living.
In the latter case, a unit-factor has seemingly been lost out in some way in the germ-plasm, and the product of such germ-plasm is therefore incomplete.
Their one sacred obligation to the immortal germ-plasm of which they are the trustees is to see that they hand it on with its maximal possibilities undimmed by innutrition, poisons or vice.
But in the course of the cleavage a larger cell, distinguished by its less clear plasm and its containing more yelk-granules (the mother cell of the entoderm, Figure 1.
This presumed molecular structure of the plasmis now generally admitted; but it has never been seen, and, indeed, lies far beyond the range of microscopic vision.
At that time there had been rumors among the Folk about illicit feeding and stealing of germ plasm from the smaller and weaker members of the race.
Regretfully, he began moving the cornified cells of his mantle and his under layer toward his inner surfaces, arranging them in a protective layer around his germ plasm and absorptive cells.
His precursor had always sought compliant germ plasm to produce what he had called "discipline and order.
He'd have to consider sharing some germ plasm with him at the next reproduction season, after all.
It could not mature without a transfer of germ plasm from other infants of the Folk.
The nuclei of his germ plasm swelled, their chromosomes split, and a great bud formed and separated from his body.
But he would never make the ultimate mistake of exchanging germ plasm with either of his neighbors, not even if his fertility and his position depended upon it.
The graceful Diatom is a morsel of plasm enclosed in a flinty box, often with a very pretty arrangement of the pores and markings.
At last one type develops chlorophyll (the green matter in leaves), and is able to build up plasmout of inorganic matter; another type develops mobility, and becomes a parasite on the plant world.
This aptitude would have remained inherent in the germ-plasm which the individual bears within him, as it was in the individual himself and consequently in the germ whence he sprang.
Footnote 201: This explanation is derived from Weismann's Theory of the Continuity of the Germ-Plasm as summarised in Nature.
How much are we to stand of that which degrades the germ-plasm while it raises the mind-plasm of the race?
It is only proper to point out that Weismann's theory of the germ-plasm is in express contradiction to the fundamental principles of Darwin and Lamarck.
Whether this has taken place by the action of natural selection alone, or whether the laws of variation and the intimate processes within the germ-plasm have coöperated will become clear in the discussion of germinal selection.
Still," considered Kennedy, "there might have been something latent in her family germ plasm back of the time through which you could trace it?
Then Atherton launched into a description of how he had striven to find a girl who had the strong qualities his family germ plasm seemed to have lost, mainly, I gathered, resistance to a taint much like manic depressive insanity.
Most of all, the gland seems to tell on the germ plasm of the body, especially in women.
This, making use of the germ-plasm merely as a physical basis for its manifestation, begins to build up a body suited to its further evolutionary needs.
The initial microscopic bit of germ-plasm is endowed with power of motion, thought, and human consciousness, with dominion over all the lower kingdoms through which by right of ancient conquests it passed in the brief period of nine months.
The theory of the mechanical transmission of acquired characteristics in a purely physical manner through the germ-plasm is no longer tenable when all the data of physiology and psychology are admitted.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "plasm" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word. Other words: brawn; fiber; flesh; tissue
