ESP Digital Books: The Physical Basis of Heredity

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ESP Digital Book

The Physical Basis of Heredity

Thomas Hunt Morgan

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Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role that the chromosome plays in heredity. Following the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance in 1900, Morgan began to study the genetic characteristics of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In his famous Fly Room at Columbia University, Morgan and his team demonstrated that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity. These discoveries formed the basis of the modern science of genetics.

Papers in Classical Genetics

The ESP began as an effort to share a handful of key papers from the early days of classical genetics. Now the collection has grown to include hundreds of papers, in full-text format.

Along with papers on classical genetics, ESP offers a collection of full-text digital books, including many works by Darwin and even a collection of poetry — Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg.

ESP now offers a large collection of user-selected side-by-side timelines (e.g., all science vs. all other categories, or arts and culture vs. world history), designed to provide a comparative context for appreciating world events.

Biographical information about many key scientists (e.g., Walter Sutton).

Selected Bibliographies

Bibliographies on several topics of potential interest to the ESP community are automatically maintained and generated on the ESP site.

ESP Picks from Around the Web (updated 28 JUL 2024 )

New Science

CRISPR-Cas: Bringing precise editing to DNA manipulation.

Topologically Associating Domains (TADs)

Old Science

Darwin: Origin of Species

Mendel's original paper

The first genetic map

A history of genetics

Weird Science

Treating Disease with Fecal Transplantation

Fossils of miniature humans (hobbits) discovered in Indonesia

Using DNA as a mass-storage device for digital data.

Researchers have used the microbial immune system CRISPR-Cas to encode a movie into the genome of the bacterium Escherichia coli.

Science Policy & Funding

Overbuilding Research Capacity: an important editorial in which Bruce Alberts argues that the current funding trajectory is unsustainable.

Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws: Bruce Alberts and others argue that "it is time to rethink some fundamental features of the US biomedical research ecosystem."

Gates Foundation research can't be published in top journals

Biodiversity

Woese discovers the archaea

Advances in biodiversity

DNA barcoding shows that restaurant seafood is often not what it seems

Lectures on squid-vibrio symbiosis

We are all lichens now

Animals in a bacterial world

Paleontology

Dinosaur tail, complete with feathers, found preserved in amber.

Dinosaurs and Feathers: A Bibliography

Sequencing Ancient DNA

Astronomy

Mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) detected in the distant universe.

Colliding stars will light up the night sky in 2022

Gravitational waves, ripples in space-time, detected.

Wikipedia: Hottest Years on Record

Big Data & Informatics

Big Data: Buzzword or Big Deal?

Martin Hilbert on Big data

Hacking the genome: Identifying anonymized human subjects using publicly available data.

Using DNA as a mass-storage device for digital data.

AI app blows away professional poker players

Paleoanthropology

Miniature humans — hobbits

WTF !?

Six-legged mouse discovered. No joke, no click-bait material. Just a real mouse with six legs.

A red Tesla convertible is launched into space, just for fun...

Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Assistant all can respond to commands you can't hear. Commands coming in the window or over the radio or out of the television. Oops...

Robot dogs, walking around and opening doors. Cool. What's not to like?