The Eureka Moment: An Interview with Sir Alec Jeffreys

摘要

In 1984, while tracking the veins of globin gene evolution and panning the human genome for hypervariable linkage markers, Sir Alec Jeffreys accidentally struck gold—he discovered a way to identify any human being by a DNA “fingerprint”. To use Jeffreys' words, he has been “branded” by DNA fingerprinting, but he delights in its application and the hook it provides for public curiosity about science. Like Jeffreys himself, I wanted to dig below the surface of this discovery as well as that of another genetic nugget—the intervening sequence—found as a post-doctoral fellow seven years earlier.