geneticist

/dʒəˈnɛɾɪsist/

/dʒəˈnɛtɪsist/

Other forms: geneticists

A geneticist is a scientist who studies the traits that are passed from parents to their offspring. If you're fascinated with DNA, you might want to be a geneticist.

Genetics is the branch of biology that focuses on genes, and it's practiced by geneticists. These scientists study the way genes are passed from one generation to the next, including how they vary or mutate. Some geneticists work with plants, improving their genetic resistance to disease or pests; others counsel patients who have inherited diseases or conditions. Geneticist is from genetics, originally defined as "pertaining to origins," from the Greek root genesis, "origin."

Definitions of geneticist

1. noun

   a biologist who specializes in genetics
   examples:

   Martin Cline

   American geneticist who succeeded in transferring a functioning gene from one mouse to another (born in 1934)

   John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

   Scottish geneticist (son of John Haldane) who contributed to the development of population genetics; a popularizer of science and a Marxist (1892-1964)

   Trofim Denisovich Lysenko

   Soviet geneticist whose adherence to Lamarck's theory of evolution was favored by Stalin (1898-1976)

   Hermann Joseph Muller

   United States geneticist who studied the effects of X-rays on genes (1890-1967)

   J. Craig Ventner

   United States geneticist who published the complete base sequences for all the genes of a free-living organism, the influenza bacterium; later led team that developed a first draft of the entire human genome (born in 1946)

   James Dewey Watson

   United States geneticist who (with Crick in 1953) helped discover the helical structure of DNA (born in 1928)

   August Friedrich Leopold Weismann

   German biologist who was one of the founders of modern genetics; his theory of genetic transmission ruled out the possibility of transmitting acquired characteristics (1834-1914)

   Ian Wilmut

   English geneticist who succeeded in cloning a sheep from a cell from an adult ewe (born in 1944)

   types:

   cytogeneticist

   a geneticist who specializes in the cellular components associated with heredity

   type of:

   biologist, life scientist

   (biology) a scientist who studies living organisms