Genetics 🧫🔬💗

Definition: The study of heredity and the variation of inherited characteristics.

The science of genetics was born about 120 years ago, when Gregor Mendel was working to understand the rules that govern the transmission of traits from parent to offspring after hybridization among different varieties of pea plants. Since that time, genetics has profoundly changed our understanding of life, from the level of the individual cell to that of a population of organisms evolving over millions of years. In 1900, William Bateson, a prominent British biologist, wrote presciently:

“exact determination of the laws of heredity will probably work more change in man’s outlook on the world, and in his power over nature, than any other advance in natural knowledge that can be foreseen.”