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Modern Genetic Analysis Preface
Focus on Principles

A primary goal in writing Modern Genetic Analysis was that the understanding and application of core genetic principles take priority over historical details. We hope that students will more readily recognize and grasp fundamental principles and themes if their presentation is not encumbered by excessive detail. Thus the focus is on overarching principles of genetics rather than the historical experiments that generated them. The principles are used to explain to students how genetics is done today. For instance, in Chapter 3, we introduce the common themes of complementarity of nucleic acid sequences and specificity of protein nucleic acid interactions. Students then see these themes again in subsequent chapters, applied in the analyses of DNA replication, protein synthesis, and regulation of gene expression.

In all chapters, we stress the vertical relation between DNA, protein products, and phenotype. The chapters on recombinant DNA technology focus on how recombinant DNA technology is used to isolate and characterize genes, rather than on the techniques themselves. Here the students will see how recombinant DNA techniques were used to clone the human genes for albinism and alkaptonuria. In Chapter 11, "Applications of Recombinant DNA Technology," a section deals with transgenic crops currently in use in agriculture. The chapters on developmental genetics emphasize the importance of signal transduction cascades in all aspects of a cell's or an organism's development and the important and varied switch mechanisms that underlie all developmental decisions.

Although we do not want the details of historical experiments to distract from the core principles, it is enriching in a well-rounded study of genetics for the students to be exposed to some of the landmark experiments in genetics. Students benefit from learning how these key experiments were conceived and carried out. These important investigations are set apart from the text in sections called "Genetics in Process." Here, students will read about the way that Archibald Garrod inferred the nature of inborn errors of metabolism, about the research that led Charles Yanofsky to deduce that gene and protein structure are colinear, about Watson and Crick's model for the structure of DNA, including Watson's own description of the first assembly of the metal model, and about Luria and Delbruck's method of deducing the random nature of mutations.Figure 4-20

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