Genetics: a beginner's guide

1. Genetics: past, present and future

search for order and meaning

modern image of science

prospects of modern genetics

2. From myth to modern science

Primitive interest in heredity

Mythology and the domestication of plants and animals

Heredity in human society

How are children made?

3. What is inherited?

Cellular structure

Molecular structure

Growth and biosynthesis

Enzymes

Synthesizing polymers

Cells as self-renewing, self-reproducing factories

4. breakthrough: mendel's laws

Mendel's discoveries

Pedigrees

Another example: tasters and non-tasters

Blood types

Multiple alleles and dominance

Test crosses

Probability

Two or more genes

Mendel's first law and disputed paternity

Answers to blood types questions

5. Chromosomes, reproduction, and sex

Cells and reproduction

Mitosis and the cell cycle

Karyotypes

Meiosis

Meiosis explains Mendel

location of genes

Sex chromosomes

Nondisjunction of chromosomes

XYY males: a genetic dilemma

6. function of genes

Genes and metabolic disease

Genes and enzymes

Proteins and information

Modification of hereditary disease

7. hereditary material, DNA

Bacteria

first clue

Bacteriophages

Hershey-Chase experiment

DNA structure

Genetic implications

Testing DNA structure

8. genetic dissection of gene structure

Gene arrangement

Crossing over within genes

Phage genetics

Fine structure of genes

Complementation and the definition of a gene

What is a gene?

Restriction enzymes and palindromes

Restriction mapping

9. Deciphering the code of life

How are proteins made?

RNA molecules: the tools for protein synthesis

RNA transcription

translation process

complexity of eucaryotic genes

Cracking the code

Colinearity of genes and proteins

Stop codons

Universality of the code

10. Heredity in the bacterial world

Mutant bacteria

Sex in E. coli

Plasmids

Resistance factors and antibiotic resistance

Lysogeny

Gene transfer by virus

Transduction in humans

11. Gene regulation and development

Bacterial gene regulation

Regulating eucaryotic genes

Embryonic development in general

Regulation by time in a chick's wing

Determination by position in a fly's body

Forming a fly's eye

12. DNA manipulation: the return of epimetheus?

Recombinant DNA and restriction enzymes

Studies of individual cloned fragments

Transgenic organisms

Human gene therapy

Genomics, the study of complete genomes

13. geneticist as Dr. Frankenstein

regulation of recombinant-DNA research

Genetically modified organisms

Technology in context

arguments against producing GMOs

Cloning as an ethical target

responsibility of scientists

14. fountain of change: mutation

Mutation rates

Mutation in humans

Radiation

What are mutations like?

DNA repair systems

General effects of radiation

Chromosome aberrations

Looking at human chromosomes

Aneuploidy

Duplications and deficiencies

Inversions

Translocations

15. Evolutionary genetics

Evidence for evolution

Evolution as a process

Population genetics

Human evolution

migration and diversification of Homo sapiens

Eugenics.