• Question: what is the diffrence between genitics and genomics?

    Asked by to Richard on 18 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Richard Badge

      Richard Badge answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Genetics is the much older word for studying how the inheritance of genetic material influences how organisms grow, look and behave – and really started with Gregor Mendel studying peas in the 1850s. At that time nobody knew about DNA or even had a clue what the genetic material was, but through careful breeding experiments and painstaking experiments Mendel worked out what properties it must have.

      Only a century later (in the 1950s) did scientists work out that the genetic material was DNA, but in the mean time genetics had been working quite well in explaining how organims developed and changed over time.

      Once DNA was discovered it became possible that we could know all about the entire genetic material of organisms (their genomes), although it took until 2001 to work this out for humans. So genomics is really just genetics of whole genomes.

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