LibGuides: Biology for Majors (BIOL 1224): Genetics

Articles

Everything You Thought You Knew About the Shape of DNA is Wrong
In recent years, scientists have made tremendous progress in reading the sequence of our DNA. But the three-dimensional shape of DNA remains mostly mysterious. In fact, it’s only recently that scientists have even begun to get a glimpse at how our DNA is folded.
Build Better Spools, "Reel In" More DNA
If scientists were to create custom spindles around which DNA could wrap more tightly, they would likely improve technologies for storing and transporting genetic information, delivering drugs, and building scaffolds for bioelectronics.

Blood Medicine
Kathleen Sharp talked about her book, Blood Medicine: Blowing the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever, about the prescription drug Procrit, also known as EPO. Developed in the 1980s, EPO was believed to be a biotech miracle. It was prescribed to help people with various ailments from side effects of chemotherapy to fatigue, generating billions of dollars. In 2012, Lance Armstrong was banned from the sport of cycling for abusing EPO.

The Monk in the Garden by Robin Marantz Henig
Most people know that Gregor Mendel, the Moravian monk who patiently grew his peas in a monastery garden, shaped our understanding of inheritance. But people might not know that Mendel's work was ignored in his own lifetime, even though it contained answers to the most pressing questions raised by Charles Darwin's revolutionary book, ON ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, published only a few years earlier.
The Genome Odyssey by Euan Angus Ashley
In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent, predict, and beat disease. Analyzing the human genome has decreased from a heroic multibillion dollar effort to a single clinical test costing less than $1,000. For the first time we have within our grasp the ability to predict our genetic future, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins, and to decode what it really means to be human.