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Love chemistry

Mark A Jobling

• Correspondence: Mark A Jobling maj4@le.ac.uk

Author Affiliations

Department of Genetics, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH UK

Investigative Genetics 2011, 2:9 doi:10.1186/2041-2223-2-9

Published: 4 April 2011

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

First impressions are supposed to count. The building in which I work is 1968 vintage and showing its age, but it was recently treated to a foyer makeover. These days, instead of the featureless entrance that we were accustomed to, you walk in through the sliding doors to be greeted by a floor-to-ceiling space-filling model of 60 base pairs of double-helical DNA, atmospherically lit from above by a hidden ring of blue lights. This is now a popular backdrop to photos of newly graduated students. The dominance of the iconic molecule of inheritance in a building occupied by health scientists and biologists, as well as geneticists, is partly explained by the plaque near the door, commemorating Alec Jeffreys' development of DNA fingerprinting, which took place here 26 years ago.