The naming of X and Y
The Scientist this month has a nice short article by Joseph Keierleber that recounts some of the early history of scientific investigation of the sex chromos...
All posts tagged with history of genetics
Link: A plea to think about the ethics of sampling ancient bodies
Chip Colwell writes in The Conversation about the questionable ethics involved in some ancient DNA sampling: “Rights of the dead and the living clash when sc...
Should archaeologists really fear and loathe geneticists?
Ancient DNA is following its Moore’s Law-like progression toward greater and greater sample sizes from past populations. Until this year, it may not have see...
The ad that started the Human Genome Project
Via Jay Shendure, who shared this ad on Twitter this weekend:
Quote: Dobzhansky on borderline cases of species and races
Theodosius Dobzhansky, in his essay, “On species and races of living and fossil man” (1944):
Link: Article on the life and death of George Price
Michael Regnier has an article in Mosaic about the exceptional life and tragic end of George Price: “The man who gave himself away”.
Would we fund past Nobel Prize winners in today’s climate?
An editorial by Stanley Fields in this month’s issue of Genetics asks, “Would Fred Sanger Get Funded Today?”. Sanger died last year at the age of 95.
A Neanderthal memoir
Carl Zimmer reviews Svante Paabo’s new book, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes, in the New York Times: “Missing Links”. Zimmer gives a balanced revi...
Unraveling Fisher's mysteries
Haldane’s Sieve has a great post by James Lee giving context to a new preprint from him and Carson Chow: “Our paper: The causal meaning of Fishers average ef...
Quote: Lederberg on the candidate gene approach
In my last post (“Quote: Lederberg on Haldane”) I pointed to a 1999 article by Joshua Lederberg Lederberg:Haldane:1999. Later in the article, he considers an...
Quote: Lederberg on Haldane
J. B. S. Haldane has typically been assigned credit for the first suggestion that human hemoglobinopathies are adaptations to malaria. In 1999, Joshua Lederb...
Quote: Haldane on detecting variation in fitness
In a 1937 paper Haldane:fitness:1937, J. B. S. Haldane covered some aspects of the evolutionary process in a particularly clear way. Not everything in the fo...
Tomoko Ohta profile
Current Biology has published an interview of the esteemed Japanese population geneticist Tomoko Ohta Ohta:profile:2012.
Guinea pigs in experiment and history
Daniel Engber in Slate: “Test-Tube Piggies: How did the guinea pig become a symbol of science?”
A story of methemoglobinemia
A story by Susan Donaldson James of a unique genetic disorder and the social stigma of inbreeding in Appalachia: “Fugates of Kentucky: Skin Bluer than Lake L...
James F. Crow, 1916-2012
I received today the sad news that my friend and colleague James F. Crow has died, at the age of 95. Jim was a legend in the field of population genetics, wh...
Eighth day of creation
Larry Moran muses on the recent death of Horace Judson, author of The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology. This excellent history is ...
Galton remembered
Steve Jones writes in the BBC News on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Francis Galton’s death: “Francis Galton: The man who drew up the ‘ugly map...
Timmer on HGP
John Timmer tells us “Ten years on: why a complete human genome mattered,” from the perspective first of a bench scientist, then later as a science writer:
Morris Goodman obituary
A reader forwards the news that Morris Goodman has died. Goodman was among the first to demonstrate molecular similarity between humans and chimpanzees; he b...
Quote: Dobzhansky on the tropics
Theodosius Dobzhansky, concluding a paper titled, “Evolution in the Tropics”, which considered the role of physical environment versus other factors as evolu...
Gene number in humans the old-fashioned way
While doing some other research, I ran across a remarkable short paper by James Spuhler, “On the number of genes in man,” printed in Science in 1948.
Chimp trivia
Courtesy of Jon Cohen in Science (“The Chimpanzee Genome Project’s Seedy Origins”), a detail that I hadn’t heard before:
Quote: R. A. Fisher on chance and natural selection
From p. 37 of the Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930):
We control the horizontal
New Scientist has an article by Mark Buchanan discussing horizontal transfer as a mechanism for the evolution of early life: “Horizontal and vertical: The ev...
Sickle cell chimeras
Many of us use sickle cell as an example in classes. I always do so while noting the progress that has been made in treating the condition in Westernized con...
R. A. Fisher's model of adaptation
Chapter 2 of R. A. Fisher’s Genetical Theory of Natural Selection is remarkable for many reasons. In it, he presents a model of selection in an age-structure...
The colors of mice
Science this week features an article by Elizabeth Pennisi about the research of evolutionary biologist Hopi Hoekstra. She studies pigment variations in wild...
Crow and Kimura back in print
A new printing of a classic population genetics text has been issued this year: An Introduction to Population Genetics Theory, by James Crow and Motoo Kimura.
Quote: Fisher defining epistasis
People often complain that R. A. Fisher wrote in a hard-to-read style; unnecessarily verbose and indirect. Either I don’t tend to mind, or I find that the st...
King Kong humanzee trivia
I'm coming late to this story, but it's still timely! The New York Times has an op-ed by Clive Wynne linking the inspiration for the original King Kong to S...