bean-bag genetics
n.— «As Robert Brandon famously stated, genes are invisible to selection. Yet, population genetics assumes that the genes are visible to selection. How? Via phenotypes. But that is an oversimplified notion that a mutation in one gene predictably leads always to the same change in the phenotype. This one-gene one-trait view is sometimes called “bean-bag genetics.”» —“Books: “Biased Embryos and Evolution” by Wallace Arthur” by Coturnix Blog Around the Clock July 8, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
She sells seashells by the seashore. Who is the she in this tongue twister? Some claim it’s the young Mary Anning, who went on to become a famous 19th-century British paleontologist. Dubious perhaps, but the story of her rise from seaside...