Genetics in fiction Genetics in fiction Aspects of genetics including mutation, hybridisation, cloning, genetic engineering, and eugenics have appeared in fiction since the 19th century. Genetics is a young science, having started in 1900 with the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's study on the inheritance of traits in pea plants. During the 20th century it developed to create new sciences and technologies including molecular biology, DNA sequencing, cloning, and genetic engineering. The ethical implications were brought into focus with the eugenics movement. Since then, many science fiction novels and films have used aspects of genetics as plot devices, often taking one of two routes:
Muriel Wheldale Onslow teachings. In 1900 she entered Newham College, Cambridge and took a class in Natural Sciences Tripos. In 1903 she joined William Bateson's genetics lab at Cambridge where she began her study focusing on the interaction of factors and of the inheritance of petal color in Antirrhinum (snapdragons). William Bateson was the English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscovery in 1900. Bateson and Onslow carried out a series of breeding experiments in various plant and animal species