The principles of human biochemical genetics / Harry Harris.

  • Harry Harris
Date:
1970
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The principles of human biochemical genetics / Harry Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    13/354 (page IX)
    Preface This book has grown out of a course of lectures given at the Galton Labora¬ tory, which was intended not only for students and research workers in human genetics, but also for biochemistry, biology and medical students as well as for interested research workers in related fields. I was concerned to explain the principal concepts which underlie modern ideas in human bio¬ chemical genetics, to present a picture of the extraordinary degree of inherited biochemical diversity which recent research has shown to be a characteristic feature of human populations, and to show how the detailed analysis of genetically determined biochemical differences between individual members of our species could throw new light on fundamental problems not only in genetics, but also in medicine and more generally in human biology. Just over ten years ago I wrote an account of the subject (Human Biochemi¬ cal Genetics, Cambridge University Press, 1959) covering most of the in¬ formation which was then available, in what seemed at the time a logical order. Since then, however, research in this field has expanded almost ex¬ plosively and in preparing the present book, it became very obvious that one could not be content with simply trying to update the earlier text. The many advances now called for a very différent arrangement if present knowledge and concepts were to be presented in a coherent manner. This is not merely because a great deal more is now known about the particular topics that were dealt with in the earlier book, but because whole new areas of the subject have been opened up in a manner which could hardly have been envisaged only a few years ago. One of the important consequences of these develop¬ ments has been the greater unity they have given to the subject as a whole. The interrelationships between what at one time seemed very different and unconnected types of phenomena such as the inborn errors of metaboHsm, the blood group antigenic differences, the haemoglobin diseases and the enzyme and protein polymorphisms, can now be thought about within a consistent theoretical framework in a way that was hardly possible previously. This of course gives one an opportunity to try and present the subject in a more systematic and analytical manner. So the present work differs consider-