Founding Fathers (of Genetics)
This naturalist’s observations of finches in the Galápagos Islands helped him develop his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Who is Charles Darwin?
This Marvel superhero gained his powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider.
Who is Spider-Man?
This UW–Madison alumnus is a rapper who studied marketing and signed with a record label while a senior in 2017.
Who is Yung Gravy?
Real news or fake news?: The Sonic Hedgehog gene helps shape early brain and limb development — and yes, it’s named after the Sega video game character.
What is real news?
Like making a photocopy of a page from a recipe book — this process copies DNA into RNA.
What is transcription?
He’s known as the “Father of Genetics” for his experiments on pea plants that uncovered the basic laws of inheritance.
Who is Gregor Mendel?
This animated movie follows the adventures of a trash-compacting robot left to clean up Earth.
What is WALL-E?
All three of these brothers played football for UW–Madison before going on to careers in the NFL.
Who are the Watts brothers?
In 2025, researchers found that a mutation in the gene ARHGAP36 on the X chromosome explains why most of these orange-colored pets are male.
What are cats?
When pieces of homologous chromosomes swap places during meiosis — creating genetic diversity.
What is crossing over (recombination)?
These two scientists built the first correct model of DNA’s double-helix structure in 1953.
Who are James Watson and Francis Crick?
This 1993 film featured cloned dinosaurs created using DNA extracted from fossilized mosquitoes.
What is Jurassic Park?
This is the number of Nobel Prize winners who have served as faculty members in UW–Madison’s Genetics Department.
What is 2?
Real news or fake news?: The Disco Stu gene causes Drosophila fruit flies to grow tiny disco-ball-like eye structures under ultraviolet light.
What is fake news?
Used for targeted genome editing, this molecular system—originally part of a bacterial immune defense—acts like programmable genetic scissors.
What is CRISPR-Cas9 editing?
This woman’s X-ray diffraction image, known as “Photo 51,” was key evidence used to identify DNA’s helical shape.
Who is Rosalind Franklin?
This real-life physicist was portrayed by Cillian Murphy in a 2023 film about the creation of the atomic bomb.
Who is J. Robert Oppenheimer?
This was the very first vitamin that was isolated at UW Madison
What is vitamin A?
The U.K.’s National Health Service approved the world’s first CRISPR-based treatment for this inherited blood disorder that affects millions, particularly of African descent.
What is sickle cell disease?
Unlike homologous recombination, this DNA repair mechanism rejoins double-strand breaks without using a matching sequence as a guide, sometimes causing mutations.
What is non-homologous end joining?
This pair of scientists showed that DNA, not protein, is the molecule that carries genetic information, in their famous 1952 experiment.
Who are Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase?
In Interstellar, this scientific phenomenon allows Cooper to communicate with his daughter across time through gravity.
What is a black hole (or gravitational singularity)?
This UW–Madison geneticist’s 1950s research on unstable genetic loci in maize paralleled Barbara McClintock’s discovery of transposons.
Who is R. A. Brink?
The biotech startup Colossal Biosciences made headlines by engineering wolf pups with genetic traits of this Ice Age predator made famous by Game of Thrones.
What is the dire wolf?
Abnormal patterns of this modification can lead to cancer by silencing tumor suppressor genes.
What is DNA methylation?