The history of genetics starts a long way back with the male- and blood-centric views of the ancient Greeks. Mendel the father of genetics changed everything with an experimental and quantitative approach that led to his two laws. He published his famous paper in 1866, but it lay dormant until its rediscovery in 1900. In 1983, Barbara McClintock received a Nobel prize for her work on transposons. Just as Mendel was ahead of his time- so was McClintock. She stopped publishing her results for a long period because of the skepticism of other scientists. The Nobel prize came some 40 years after her initial findings. The prize was a vindication for her and a landmark for women, as she was the first female scientist to win the "physiology" Nobel outright.
My first lecture is about some of this history and then goes on to genome projects and technology. I have been very struck by so-called next generation sequencing. It is amazing creative technology and quite simply mind blowing. It is all heading towards the $1000 genome. Imagine what that can mean for medicine and more. Perhaps Dr. Farrell who will be giving the ethics component of this class will have some comments.
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