PREFACE The purpose of this audio-course is to help you learn about the field of genetics at the college-level of understanding. Genetics is the study of how traits are passed on from parent to offspring as well as how things like natural selection affect the genetics of a given population or species. The field of genetics has come a long way since the first research was done on how genetic traits are passed on from generation to generation. We will also talk a great deal about what is known about genetics at the molecular level. After more than a century of research in this field, scientists who study genetics now know about what genetic material looks like and the molecular processes behind things like cell replication, sexual and asexual reproduction, and genetic mutations in all types of organisms. The knowledge of these things have greatly impacted our understanding of genetic diseases and has paved the way toward being able to manipulate the genetics of a species in everything from cloning to genetic engineering and the use of genetics to treat all types of diseases. At the completion of this course, you should feel more confident about the large-scale and molecular aspects of genetics as they apply to prokaryotic species and to eukaryotic organisms, such as plants and animals, including humans and our many genetic disease states. In chapter one in the course, we will talk about some of the basic issues in genetics and genetic research. The history of genetics and how it has been understood in the past is covered in this chapter as well as what we know about genes and chromosomes in prokaryotic organisms and in eukaryotes. Genetics is a broad field of study, with several branches we will touch upon. We will expand on this to talk about molecular gene expression, the genetic code, and how genes become traits, which will be further explained in later chapters. Chapter two covers the seminal work of Gregor Mendel, partly because no discussion of genetics should not include his work. Mendel worked with pea plants in a systematic way to identify how traits get passed from parent plants to offspring. His work was
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