Genetics
Genetics is the field of science that attempts to explain why you inherited your father's prominent chin, but not his great fortune. In this simple example, geneticists would conclude that you are the result of an affair with the housemaid.
Mendelism and Straussism
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) always claimed he was a monk, but DNA tests have proven him to be the father of genetics. Mendel was in the right place at the right time: his monastery was a respected seat of learning, and the monastic diet consisted solely of peas.
As head chef, Mendel developed a deep and lasting affection for peas and spent many years breeding pedigree varieties for the Austrian Legume Show. In the quest for the perfect pea, he began his first genetic experiments.
Peas come in two types or traits: frozen (denoted f) and mushy (denoted Splat). The mushy trait is said to be dominant and the frozen trait recessive because frozen peas (ff) can be mushed once they have defrosted, but if you freeze mushy peas (SplatSplat) you end up with a frozen mush (fSplat or Yuk).
However, Mendel's breeding experiments demonstrated that the frozen trait could reappear in subsequent generations:
Mendel's work was very successful, resulting in both laws and ratios. But to his fellow biologists this all smelled distinctly of mathematics and they fled in terror.
The basis of Mendel's laws is the gene, so named because it comes in pairs and it's made of denim. The gene was the work of the Frenchman Lévi Strauss (1829-1902), who trained as an anthropologist but soon became attracted to pea breeding because of its tough, outdoorsy image.
Sadly, the two great men never became aware of each other's work. This despite the fact that Strauss regularly attended the Austrian Legume Show and that Mendel owned over 30,000 pairs of genes. The synthesis of their ideas had to wait until the twentieth century, eventually producing the edible green genes that we all enjoy today.
How Genes Work
To understand how genes operated, it was essential to find out more about the mysterious denim from which they were made. The structure of denim was unravelled by the brilliant detective work of Francis Crick (1916-2004) and James D. Watson (1928-). Their adventures are chronicled in Dr Watson's famous book, The Case of the Robust Pantaloons.
In one notorious episode they pulled off a spectacular midnight heist, half-inching the original denim fabric from Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) with the help of their inside man, Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004). It was all jolly good fun.
While scarpering through the London fog, Crick and Watson examined the fibres with a magnifying glass and immediately realised that they had a double helix structure (elucidatory note: a double helix looks like a helix, but doubled). Not only did this indicate a mechanism by which genes copy themselves, but it also explained their legendary toughness.
The instruction manual for an organism is written using the genetic code. For many centuries the genetic code was kept hidden by a sinister religious sect known as the Codons. It only became widely known after extensive investigations of Renaissance art and American banknotes.
The genetic code is occasionally misheard by the genetic clerks. This results in a mutation. Mutations do not necessarily have an effect on the organism. All of us are mutants in one way or another, but not all of us possess superstrength or X-ray vision.
Nature vs Nurture
Is our behaviour influenced more by our genes or our environment? This is the nature vs nurture debate. Some scientists will try to persuade you that this is a flawed question, probably by means of diagrams, but that's just their nature.
Some human characteristics are determined entirely by genes, such as your blood group, the ability to roll your tongue, and which football team you support. Others depend solely on the environment, such as the language you speak, the phobia of fences you picked up after you tried to climb over the school fence that time, and the value of your house. In between is a huge grey area known technically as The Tabloid Zone.
In order to investigate this area, geneticists have to put away their beloved fruit flies and instead experiment on human identical twins. The twins are bred in specially enlarged milk bottles and then released into the wild in two very different environments, let's say the jungles of Borneo and the Antarctic wilderness.
Ten years later the researcher gets out his tranquilliser gun and goes looking for the twins. If they have survived, their behaviour can be compared for environmental influences. Do they still dress the same way? Have they started to resemble gibbons/penguins? Do they both still like Depeche Mode?
To date, the genes are just 17 runs behind the environment, but they are down to their tail-enders and the light is fading.
Genetic Engineering
The iMouse comes in six stylish pastel shades.
What do you get if you cross a geneticist and an engineer? Unfortunately we can't afford to tell you, because the punchline has been patented by a biotechnology company. That's fine by this encyclopedia, because our pension plan is seriously over-exposed to the biotech sector.
Genetic engineering lies at the heart of biotechnology (although soon it will lie at the confluence of two hearts, because surely such an important organ deserves to have built-in redundancy). The manipulation of genetic material also offers huge therapeutic opportunities, with the possibility of tackling many genetic disorders.
Unfortunately, the power of genetic engineering raises a clone army of ethical questions. The first of these is whether we should bother to learn anything whatsoever about genetic engineering so that we can actually hold an informed opinion on the matter.
Nowhere is the controversy more vitriolic than in the case of GM (genetically modified) foods, or as they are known in Britain, Vauxhall foods. There is no middle ground in the GM debate. Either you believe they will give every person in the developing world three square meals a day plus whatever they like from the sweet trolley, or they will lead to a diabolical race of triffids that will wipe out humanity sometime around breakfast.
Genetic engineering is such an ethical minefield that it would be prudent to bring the article to a close at this point, at least until development is completed on the new strain of mine-resistant ethics.