Description
Genetics is the science of heredity. This science seeks to explain how the characteristics of living things are passed down from parent to offspring. Humans have had a sense of genetics for millennia, first as hunter gatherers who knew how their food was propagated, then as Neolithic farmers who were able to selectively breed plants and animals and transform them into domestic entities. Over the last one and half centuries, scientists have experimented and uncovered the determinants, mechanisms, and rules that cause genetics to work. Using the tools of molecular biology, scientists have discovered the nature of genes, chromosomes, and DNA. The purpose of this lecture is to understand how genetics works so that we can then apply it as a line of evidence in human origins and then more specifically to understanding our own individual backgrounds and how we pass traits to our descendants. This lecture is about molecular biology.