Monday, 9 September 2013

Genetics: Principles and Analysis; Fourth Edition

This book is titled Genetics: Principles and Analysis, Fourth Edition, because it embodies our belief that a good course in genetics should maintain the right balance between two important aspects of the science. The first aspect is that genetics is a body of knowledge pertaining to genetic transmission, function, and mutation. This constitutes the Principles. The second aspect is that genetics is an experimental approach, or a kit of "tools," for the study of biological processes such as development or behavior. This is Analysis.

The overall aim of Genetics: Principles and Analysis, Fourth Edition, is to provide a clear, comprehensive, rigorous, and balanced introduction to genetics at the college level. It is a guide to learning a critically important and sometimes difficult subject.

Genetics: Principles and Analysis, Fourth Edition, incorporates many special features to help students achieve these learning goals. The text is clearly and concisely written in a somewhat relaxed prose style without being chummy or excessively familiar. Each chapter is headed by a list of Principles that are related at numerous points to the larger whole. Each chapter contains two or three Connections in which the text material is connected to excerpts of classic papers that report key experiments in genetics or that raise important social, ethical, or legal issues in genetics. Each Connection has a brief introduction of its own, explaining the importance of the experiment and the historical context in which it was carried out. At the end of each chapter is a complete Summary, Key Terms, GeNETics on the web exercises that guide students in the use of Internet resources in genetics, and several different types and levels of Problems. These features are discussed individually below.

In recent decades, both the amount of genetic knowledge and its rate of growth have exploded. Many of the new discoveries have personal and social relevance through applications of genetics to human affairs in prenatal diagnosis, testing for carriers, and identification of genetic risk factors for complex traits, such as breast cancer and heart disease. There are also ethical controversies: Should genetic manipulation be used on patients for the treatment of disease? Should human fetuses be used in research? Should human beings be cloned? There are also social controversies—for example, when insurance companies exclude coverage of people because of their inherited risks of certain diseases.



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