Why Genes in Pieces?
Emma Kowal, MIT
One of the biggest surprises in molecular biology was that genes in eukaryotic genomes are organized in pieces, and that some pieces, called introns, need to be removed from the gene transcript before protein can be made. In this lecture, MIT graduate student Emma Kowal talks about the baffling discovery of introns 40 years ago, some amazing facts about introns in the human genome, and some of the cool things they do that scientists like her are still exploring today.