Week 1

Credit 1 hour
Lecture № 1
Subject:Introduction. Subject and tasks of genetics.
Purpose:To familiarize with the main goals and objectives of the subject of genetics.
The content of the lecture: Genetics is a field of biology that studies how traits are passed from
parents to their offspring. The passing of traits from parents to offspring is known as heredity,
therefore, genetics is the study of heredity. This introduction to genetics takes you through the
basic components of genetics such as DNA, genes, chromosomes and genetic inheritance.
Genetics is built around molecules called DNA. DNA molecules hold all the genetic
information for an organism. It provides cells with the information they need to perform tasks
that allow an organism to grow, survive and reproduce. A gene is one particular section of a DNA
molecule that tells a cell to perform one specific task.
Heredity is what makes children look like their parents. During reproduction, DNA is
replicated and passed from a parent to their offspring. This inheritance of genetic material by
offspring influences the appearance and behavior of the offspring. The environment that an
organism lives in can also influence how genes are expressed.
Genetics is the study of genes and tries to explain what they are and how they work.
Genes are how living organisms inherit features or traits from their ancestors; for example,
children usually look like their parents because they have inherited their parents' genes. Genetics
tries to identify which traits are inherited, and explain how these traits are passed from
generation to generation.
Some traits are part of an organisms' physical appearance; such as a person's eye color,
height or weight. Other sorts of traits are not easily seen and include blood types or resistance to
diseases. Some traits are inherited through our genes, so tall and thin people tend to have tall and
thin children. Other traits come from interactions between our genes and the environment, so a
child might inherit the tendency to be tall, but if they are poorly nourished, they will still be
short. The way our genes and environment interact to produce a trait can be complicated. For
example, the chances of somebody dying of cancer or heart disease seems to depend on both
their genes and their lifestyle.
Genes are made from a long molecule called DNA, which is copied and inherited across
generations. DNA is made of simple units that line up in a particular order within this large
molecule. The order of these units carries genetic information, similar to how the order of letters
on a page carries information. The language used by DNA is called the genetic code, which lets
organisms read the information in the genes. This information is the instructions for constructing
and operating a living organism.
The information within a particular gene is not always exactly the same between one
organism and another, so different copies of a gene do not always give exactly the same
instructions. Each unique form of a single gene is called an allele. As an example, one allele for
the gene for hair color could instruct the body to produce a lot of pigment, producing black hair,
while a different allele of the same gene might give garbled instructions that fail to produce any
pigment, giving white hair. Mutations are random changes in genes and can create new alleles.
Mutations can also produce new traits, such as when mutations to an allele for black hair produce
a new allele for white hair. This appearance of new traits is important in evolution.
Questions for self-control:
Genetics is the science of the laws of heredity, inheritance, and variability
Methods of genetics
The main sections of modern genetics

Credit 2 hour
Lecture № 2
Subject:A short history of the development of genetics.
Purpose:To familiarize with the history of science.
The content of the lecture: The history of genetics dates from the classical era with
contributions by Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, and others. Modern genetics
began with the work of the Augustinian friar Gregor Johann Mendel. His work on pea plants,
published in 1866, established the theory of Mendelian inheritance.
The year 1900 marked the "rediscovery of Mendel" by Hugo de Vries, Carl
Correns and Erich von Tschermak, and by 1915 the basic principles of Mendelian genetics had
been studied in a wide variety of organisms — most notably the fruit fly Drosophila
melanogaster. Led by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his fellow "drosophilists", geneticists
developed the Mendelian model, which was widely accepted by 1925. Alongside experimental
work, mathematicians developed the statistical framework of population genetics, bringing
genetic explanations into the study of evolution.
With the basic patterns of genetic inheritance established, many biologists turned to
investigations of the physical nature of the gene. In the 1940s and early 1950s, experiments
pointed to DNA as the portion of chromosomes (and perhaps other nucleoproteins) that held
genes. A focus on new model organisms such as viruses and bacteria, along with the discovery of
the double helical structure of DNA in 1953, marked the transition to the era of molecular
genetics.
In the following years, chemists developed techniques for sequencing both nucleic acids
and proteins, while many others worked out the relationship between these two forms of
biological molecules and discovered the genetic code. The regulation of gene expression became
a central issue in the 1960s; by the 1970s gene expression could be controlled and manipulated
through genetic engineering. In the last decades of the 20th century, many biologists focused on
large-scale genetics projects, such as sequencing entire genomes.
1856-1863: Mendel studied the inheritance of traits between generations based on
experiments involving garden pea plants. He deduced that there is a certain tangible essence that
is passed on between generations from both parents. Mendel established the basic principles of
inheritance, namely, the principles of dominance, independent assortment, and segregation.
1869: Friedrich Miescher discovers a weak acid in the nuclei of white blood cells that
today we call DNA.
1880-1890: Walther Flemming, Eduard Strasburger, and Edouard Van Beneden elucidate
chromosome distribution during cell division.
1889: Hugo de Vries postulates that "inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in
particles", naming such particles "(pan)genes.
1903: Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri independently hypothesizes that chromosomes,
which segregate in a Mendelian fashion, are hereditary units. Boveri was studying sea urchins
when he found that all the chromosomes in the sea urchins had to be present for proper
embryonic development to take place. Sutton's work with grasshoppers showed that
chromosomes occur in matched pairs of maternal and paternal chromosomes which separate
during meiosis. He concluded that this could be "the physical basis of the Mendelian law of
heredity".
1908: G.H. Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg proposed the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium
model which describes the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population, which are
under certain specific conditions, as constant and at a state of equilibrium from generation to
generation unless specific disturbing influences are introduced.
1910: Thomas Hunt Morgan shows that genes reside on chromosomes while determining
the nature of sex-linked traits by studying Drosophila melanogaster. He determined that the
white-eyed mutant was sex-linked based on Mendelian's principles of segregation and
independent assortment.
1913: Alfred Sturtevant makes the first genetic map, showing that chromosomes contain
linearly arranged genes
 1918: Ronald Fisher publishes "The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of
Mendelian Inheritance" the modern synthesis of genetics and evolutionary biology starts.
1923: Frederick Griffith studied bacterial transformation and observed that DNA carries
genes responsible for pathogenicity.
1928: Frederick Griffith discovers that hereditary material from dead bacteria can be
incorporated into live bacteria.
1931: Crossing over is identified as the cause of recombination; the first cytological
demonstration of this crossing over was performed by Barbara McClintock and Harriet
Creighton
1941: Edward Lawrie Tatum and George Wells Beadle show that genes code for proteins.
1950: Erwin Chargaff determined the pairing method of nitrogenous bases. Chargaff and
his team studied the DNA from multiple organisms and found three things (also known as
Chargaff's rules). First, the concentration of the pyrimidines (guanine and adenine) are always
found in the same amount as one another. Second, the concentration of purines (cytosine and
thymine) are also always the same. Lastly, Chargaff and his team found the proportion of
pyrimidines and purines correspond each other.
1952: an X-ray diffraction image of DNA was taken by Raymond Gosling in May 1952, a
student supervised by Rosalind Franklin.
1953: DNA structure is resolved to be a double helix by Rosalind Franklin, James Watson
and Francis Crick.
1955: Alexander R. Todd determined the chemical makeup of nitrogenous bases. Todd
also successfully synthesized adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and flavin adenine dinucleotide
(FAD).
1955: Joe Hin Tjio, while working in Albert Levan's lab, determined the number of
chromosomes in humans to be of 46.
1958: The Meselson–Stahl experiment demonstrates that DNA is semiconservatively
replicated.
1961: Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner discovered frame shift mutations.
1961: Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob and Matthew Meselson identified the function of
messenger RNA.
1966: Marshall W. Nirenberg, Philip Leder, Har Gobind Khorana cracked the genetic
code by using RNA homopolymer and heteropolymer experiments, through which they figured
out which triplets of RNA were translated into what amino acids in yeast cells.
1980: Paul Berg, Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger developed methods of mapping the
structure of DNA.
1980: Stanley Norman Cohen and Herbert Boyer received first U.S. patent for gene
cloning, by proving the successful outcome of cloning a plasmid and expressing a foreign gene
in bacteria to produce a "protein foreign to a unicellular organism." .
1983: Kary Banks Mullis invents the polymerase chain reaction enabling the easy
amplification of DNA.
1985: Alec Jeffreys announced DNA fingerprinting method.
1986: Jeremy Nathans found genes for color vision and color blindness, working with
David Hogness, Douglas Vollrath and Ron Davis as they were studying the complexity of the
retina.
1987: Yoshizumi Ishino accidentally discovers and describes part of a DNA sequence
which later will be called CRISPR
1989: Thomas Cech discovered that RNA can catalyze chemical reactions, making for
one of the most important breakthroughs in molecular genetics, because it elucidates the true
function of poorly understood segments of DNA.
1994: The first breast cancer gene is discovered.
1995: The genome of bacterium Haemophilus influenzae is the first genome of a free
living organism to be sequenced.
 1996: Alexander Rich discovered the Z-DNA, a type of DNA which is in a transient state,
that is in some cases associated with DNA transcription.
1997: Dolly the sheep was cloned by Ian Wilmut and colleagues from the Roslin Institute
in Scotland.
1998: The first genome sequence for a multicellular eukaryote, Caenorhabditis elegans, is
released.
2004: Merck introduced a vaccine for Human Papillomavirus which promised to protect
women against infection with HPV 16 and 18, which inactivates tumor suppressor genes and
together cause 70% of cervical cancers.
2007: Timothy Ray Brown becomes the first person cured from HIV/AIDS through a
Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
2016: A genome is sequenced in outer space for the first time, with NASA astronaut Kate
Rubins using a MinION device aboard the International Space Station.
Questionsforself-control:
History of science and its origins
The main stages of the development of genetics from Mendel to the present day