title: Genome: twisting stories with DNA.
abstract: In 1920, the German botanist Hans Winkler coined the concept of the 'genome'. This paper explores the history of a concept that has developed in parallel with advances in biology and supports novel and powerful heuristic biological research in the 21st century. From a structural interpretation (the genome as the haploid number of chromosomes), it has changed to keep pace with technological progress and new interpretations of the material of heredity. In the first place, the 'genome' was extended to include all the material in the nucleus, then the sum of all genes, and (with the discovery of the structure of DNA) the sum of the nucleotide base sequences. In the early 21st century, it has become a much more complex and central concept that has spawned the growing field of studies referred to as the 'omics'.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biología Evolutiva, Facultad de Ciencias, UNAM, 04510, Ciudad Universitaria, México DF, Mexico. Electronic address: rns@ciencias.unam.mx.
authors.forename: Ricardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Noguera-Solano
authors.forename: Rosaura
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ruiz-Gutierrez
authors.forename: Juan Manuel
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Rodriguez-Caso
mesh_terms: D004247:DNA / Q000266:history*; D036281:Genetic Research / Q000266:history; D016678:Genome; D023281:Genomics / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D004247:DNA