While there, Wright also met a number of influential geneticists and began to take an interest in the field.
With the help of a modest state scholarship, Wright moved to the University of Illinois and received his M.S. in zoology in 1912. The same year, he attended a lecture by the prominent Harvard zoologist, W. E. Castle, who spoke of his selection and mammalian genetics experiments in hooded rats. Castle's work centered on the notion that Mendelian factors, such as recessive and dominant traits, were sometimes variable. He later altered this view, but his experiments seemed to indicate that certain genetic combinations could yield unexpected results. Intrigued by these ideas, Wright signed on as Castle's personal assistant and graduate student.
In addition to his doctoral classwork, Wright also worked at Harvard's Bussey Institution, a biological research facility, helping Castle maintain a colony of hooded rats and working with other researchers to develop a guinea pig colony. Wright had learned about the genetics of guinea pigs while at Cold Spring Harbor, and Castle assumed that Wright would eventually use the colony for his own research. Wright thought the guinea pig was a valuable research animal, despite the fact that they are disease prone, relatively large and cumbersome, and have long reproductive cycles.
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