On the Origin of Genetics and Beginnings of Medical Genetics of Diseases of the Kidney

The twentieth century has been termed the century of the gene. Although the term “gene” was introduced in 1909, interest in reproduction and heredity has occupied humankind since its transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers and herders. Heredity, as it applies to diseases, began with Greek medicine. The humoral theory of the Hippocratic Corpus provided an etiological explanation for susceptibility of individuals to certain diseases well into the nineteenth century and was variously termed diathesis, temperament, and constitution. The application of the new probability math to quantify the hybridization of sweet peas by Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) in 1866 provided a scientific basis to inheritance, which had theretofore been an amalgam of scattered empirical observations. The near simultaneous publication of Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in 1859 was a key catalyst in the transfer of what had been studies in plant biology into studies of populations and humans. The subsequent growth of genetics has been the outcome of interplay of technological breakthroughs in statistical analysis, cytology, biochemistry, physics, and computer science, coupled with the insightful analysis of workers in the field, several of whom have been the recipients of the Nobel Prize in medicine or chemistry since 1933. Application of these techniques to molecular biology and medical genetics is just beginning to yield insight into diseases of the kidney and provide visions of their likely therapies in the future.