AGB 121: Principles of Animal Genetics and Population Genetics (2+1)

GENETICS

• Genetics is the scientific study of the mechanism of heredity and variation. Hereditary characteristics are determined by elementary units transmitted between generations in uniform predictable fashion. Each unit called a gene must satisfy at least two essential requirements:

1. that it is inherited in such fashion that each descendant has a physical copy of the material and
2. that it provides information to its carriers in respect to structure, function and other biological attributes.

• William Bateson introduced the term "genetics" (from the Greek word genno: to give birth) to describe the study of inheritance and the science of variation in a personal letter to Alan Sedgwick, dated April 18, 1905. The term "genetics" first used publicly by Bateson at the Third International Conference on Plant Hybridization in London in 1906.
• The terms gene, phenotype and genotype were coined by the Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen and first used from 1909.
• Biological inheritance is the process by which a living organism produces a new organism with many of the same traits as itself.
• Variation in inheritance is a fundamental concept in Darwin's theory of evolution.
• Drosophila melanogaster is the convenient model for the study of genetic principles.