Genetics
GENOMICS: Journey to the Center of Biology
Eric S. Lander and Robert A. Weinberg*
Without doubt, the greatest achievement in biology over the past millennium has
been the elucidation of the mechanism of heredity. Heredity is surely the
strangest of physiological processes: Organisms encapsulate instructions for
creating a member of their species in their gametes, these instructions are
passed on to a fertilized egg, and then they unfold spontaneously to give rise
to offspring. The ancient Greeks puzzled over these remarkable phenomena.
Hippocrates imagined that instructional particles were gathered together from
throughout the adult body, having been shaped by experience, while Aristotle
believed that the instructions were constant and inherent in the gametes. But
philosophers could do no more than speculate for the ensuing 2000 years,
because there was no way to probe the physical nature of these instructions.
I have text version if any NG member wants it
