Useful links for BIS101, Introductory Genetics – Comai, Winter 2015
Some of the links in this page require access from the campus network. You can still get access from outside campus if you use the library VPN or other options provided by the UCD library.
Mendel
- The original paper describing Mendel’s results with pea. Published in Brunn Journal of Natural Sciences.
- Were the data too good to be true? Did Mendel cheat? He may have simplified the numbers to avoid confusing his peers (not an unreasonable idea in his context). See this authoritative discussion of the problem.
- Procedure for cross pollination of pea, described by an hobbyist gardener
- A technical manual for pea breeding
- Wild legumes avoid self-pollination and require insect for cross pollinators
- The coefficient of inbreeding
- Hybridization and inbreeding: Practical implications, as in “where do the farmer’s seed come from?”
- How many genes were changed to make corn from a wild weed?
Genetics and human disease
- The boy who walked on coals and the discovery published in the journal Nature. Read more about pain medication research and mutations in gene SCN9A affecting the pain neuron Na channel Nv1.7.
- Breast cancer and penetrance of the brca1 mutation. Angelina Jolie writes about her decision to undergo preventive double mastectomy.
- A critical view of tailored genomic medicine.
DNA repair and recombination
Polymerase Chain Reaction
- A nice movie of the mechanisms of PCR through the cycles of amplification. Note the exponential growth of precise size product vs longer molecules. Here is another movie that does a similar job.
Eukaryotic gene regulation
Folding and looping of chromatin
Comai Lab 