Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T12:08:05.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2009

Get access

Summary

Gene dosage effects have always held a fascination for me that I cannot readily explain. Perhaps it stems in part from the fact that I entered scientific research at a time when the concepts of genetic regulation – induction, repression, feedback control, adaptive enzymes – were so much in the ascendency, and yet there were clear examples in humans and other mammals of situations in which these concepts did not seem to apply. Two papers had a great influence on my thinking at the time, one by Augustinsson and Olssen (1961), concerned, strangely enough, with enzyme activities in pigs, and the other by Allison and Blumberg (1958), dealing with dominantly and recessively inherited disorders in humans.

Despite my intellectual fascination with gene dosage effects and related matters, I did not, aside from a brief letter to the editor (Epstein, 1964), approach the problem seriously until 1965, when, as a “side project,” I looked at the relationship between nuclear DNA content and cell volume in polyploid mammalian liver cells (Epstein, 1967; Epstein and Gatens, 1967). I was immediately struck by the beauty and simplicity of the relationship: over a large range of DNA content, cell volume is quite exactly proportional to ploidy. In 1967, I moved from the National Institutes of Health to the University of California, San Francisco, and in the course of this move switched my principal research focus from the genetic control of three-dimensional protein structure to the genetic control of very early mammalian embryonic development.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Consequences of Chromosome Imbalance
Principles, Mechanisms, and Models
, pp. xiii - xvi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Preface
  • Charles J. Epstein
  • Book: The Consequences of Chromosome Imbalance
  • Online publication: 14 October 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511529702.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Preface
  • Charles J. Epstein
  • Book: The Consequences of Chromosome Imbalance
  • Online publication: 14 October 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511529702.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Charles J. Epstein
  • Book: The Consequences of Chromosome Imbalance
  • Online publication: 14 October 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511529702.001
Available formats
×