View this talk at : http://hass-streaming1.win.rpi.edu:8080/video/other/ew2013/GenesInHistory/Default.html*

Abstract

Why has it been so difficult for geneticists to think “the environment” as a factor in their scientific work, despite repeatedly acknowledging its presence and importance? Why does it take the better part of a century (1900-2000) for geneticists to not only conceptualize “the environment,” but to develop the tools and methods that now allow them to finally begin analyzing the “gene-environment interactions” to which they have long paid homage, but little more? In this talk I will describe some key events in the history of genetics where environmental influences on the action of genes come briefly into view, but quickly recede again into an indistinct background. It’s not really until the era of the Human Genome Project (c. 1990) when, funnily enough, genes begin to lose their near-overwhelming privilege as “the secret of life,” and environmental factors become amenable to study by geneticists. I use asthma genetics as a case study of how geneticists come to engage more fully, conceptually and experimentally, with the real complexities of how diverse and multiple environments interact with diverse and multiple genes within diverse and multiple humans.

Bio

Mike Fortun, historian of biology and associate professor in Renssealaer’s Department of Science and Technology Studies, will share his research on the development of genetics over the last century, starting with Gregor Mendel, through the Human Genome Project and recent studies of gene-environment interaction.

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