PREFACE

My desire to write this genetics textbook actually stemmed from a cell biology course that I introduced at the University of Minnesota many years ago. Our department decided to offer an intermediate level cell biology course to bridge the gap between our basic undergraduate cell biology and a more advanced graduate course, and I was asked to create it. I developed and taught this course for many years. It was a particularly fun experience, but I must admit that it got off to a rocky start. Let me explain.

The goal was to develop an intermediate cell biology course that combined an undergraduate level of explanation but incorporated experiments from actual research papers. For each class session, the students were expected to read one or two research papers and understand them, and then we were supposed to discuss them in class. So as a young, naïve, yet enthusiastic assistant professor, this seemed like a good plan. During the first few weeks of this course, however, I would walk into the classroom each day and ask the class, "So tell me about the first experiment in the paper you were supposed to read for today." I was hoping that there would be lots of volunteers who could go to the blackboard and explain the experiment. But instead, I received the "deer in the headlights" response. Obviously something was wrong.

I knew that the problem wasn't the students in the course, because many of our brightest and hardest working students were enrolled. And I definitely hoped that I wasn't the problem. So it had to be something else. Over time, the students and I uncovered the problem. Their previous coursework was not training them to analyze experiments according to the scientific method. Sure, they had learned many "facts" and bits and pieces of experiments, but they hadn't been exposed, in a systematic and rigorous way, to the scientific process. We needed to fix that. The good news was that the intermediate cell biology course turned out to be really fun for the students because it was the first time that many of them had taken a college course that allowed them to unleash their curiosity and utilize their critical thinking skills. It was also fun for me because I could witness this happening.

For the intermediate cell biology course to be a success, the students and I had to develop a strategy to coherently discuss the experiments within research papers. Looking back on it, the solution seemed obvious. We needed to follow the scientific method as a way to dissect the parts of each experiment. We ended up doing that. For each experiment, I would ask the class a series of questions.

• Why was this experiment done?
  The students' answers would have two parts. First, they would need to consider the background work that led to the experiment. And second, the students would have to explicitly state the hypothesis that the researchers were trying to test.
• How was the experiment done?
  As a class, we would generate a flow diagram that described the experimental methods.
• What are results?
  We would look at the raw data and quantitatively analyze it.
• What do the results mean?
  We would discuss our interpretations of the data. The goal of such interpretations was to derive conceptual ideas that underlie the experimental data. Sometimes, our interpretations were quite different from the researchers who had actually done the experiments. The occasional conflict between our interpretations and those of the researchers provided the most meaningful moments in the classroom. It caused many students to realize that the scientific concepts and principles they had learned about in previous courses are the product of scientific interpretations of research data. And maybe, they aren't always right!

I have to say that the intermediate cell biology course has been my most inspiring teaching experience. What I mean is that the students were inspiring to me. (I hope that I was inspiring to them as well). On the positive side, it was impressive to see how the students improved their abilities to analyze experiments as the course progressed. On the negative side, however, it left me with a deeply disappointing sense that most college-level science courses do not provide students with an adequate exposure to the scientific process. To some extent, I felt that textbooks were to blame. In an effort to include too much information, science textbooks had largely deleted the essence of science, namely, the scientific method. At that point, I decided to write a textbook that would incorporate the scientific method into each chapter. Since my primary background is in genetics rather than cell biology, it was logical for me to write a genetics textbook, although I strongly feel that all scientific disciplines would benefit from this approach.

As you will see when you use this book, each chapter (beginning with Chapter 2) has one or two experiments that are incorporated into the chapter and which are presented according to the scientific method. These experiments are not "boxed off" from the rest of the chapter for you to read in your spare time. Rather, they are integrated within the chapters and flow with the rest of the text. As you are reading the experiments, you will simultaneously explore the scientific method and the genetics principles that have been learned from this approach. For students, I hope this textbook will help you to see the fundamental connection between scientific analysis and principles. For both students and instructors, I expect that this strategy will make genetics much more fun to explore.

ORGANIZATION

In surveying many genetics instructors, it has become apparent that most people fall into two camps: "Mendel first" versus "Molecular first". I have taught genetics both ways on many occasions. As a teaching tool, the text has been written with these different teaching strategies in mind. The organization and content of the text lends itself to such different formats of teaching.

Chapters 2 through 8 are largely inheritance chapters while Chapters 24 to 26 examine quantitative and population genetics. The bulk of the molecular genetics is found in Chapters 9 through 23, although I have tried to weave a fair amount of molecular genetics into Chapters 2 through 8 as well. The information in Chapters 9 to 23 does not assume that a student has already covered Chapter 2 through 8. Actually, each chapter throughout the entire text is written with the perspective that instructors may want to vary the order of their chapters to fit their student's needs.

For those who like to discuss inheritance patterns first, a common strategy would be to cover Chapters 1-8 first, then possibly 24-26. (However, many instructors like to cover quantitative and population genetics at the end. Either way works fine). The more molecular and technical aspects of genetics would then be covered in Chapters 9 through 23. Alternatively, if you like the "Molecular first" approach, you would probably cover Chapter 1, and then skip to Chapters 9 to 23 and then return to Chapters 2-8, and 24-26 at the end of the course. This textbook was written in such a way that either strategy works just fine.

ACCURACY

Both the publisher and myself acknowledge the fact that inaccuracies can be a source of frustration for both the instructor and students. Therefore, throughout the writing and production of this textbook we have worked diligently to eliminate errors. We would like to describe the process used to assure the accuracy of this textbook.

A team of seven instructors worked as an accuracy consultant panel and checked every chapter, illustration, and problem in the book. I also had a team of students work through all the problems sets.

The page proofs of the text were double-proofread against the manuscript to ensure the correction of any errors introduced when the manuscript was typeset. The textual examples, practice problems and solutions, end-of-chapter questions and problems, and problem answers were accuracy checked by reviewers and students again at page proof stage after the manuscript was typeset. This last round of corrections was then cross-checked against the solution manuals.