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The Scots:
A Genetic Journey.
1 March 2011
In a series coinciding with the publication of the 2011 census, historian Alistair Moffat explores our origins, with the help of new DNA science.
The series includes input from geneticist Dr Jim Wilson, Population and Disease Genetics Group who explains where we, the Scottish people, all came from originally and that much of the history of the population in Scotland can be found inside of us - written in our genes - and that we are all, in fact immigrants.
The programme travels from Cramond, outside Edinburgh, where the oldest traces of human settlement were discovered in a car park, dating back to 9000BC, to East Barnes in East Lothian where the first signs of human migration after the Ice Age reveal that those pioneering people came up from the South, from as far away as Iberia.-
The second programme explores the history of the Scottish people. The historian leaves East Barns and together with Jim Wilson, treks up Cairnpapple Hill near Linlithgow, to discover the prehistoric traces of Scotland's first farmers, whose names are lost but whose DNA has survived to this day inside the bodies of modern Scots.
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Wellcome Image Awards. A story beyond every picture.
March 2011
Two images created specifically using OPT (optical projection tomography) have won the Wellcome Image Awards 2011.
The winning images were created using OPT (A technique invented and still being developed in the Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit) by former MRC Scientist Ian Smyth along with Bob Kao and Kieran Short at Monash University, Melbourne. These scans were then rendered using a 3D rendering software, called Drishti, which makes visualizing the data far more realistic. This technology is carried out by Harris Morrison in the unit on a variety of samples for various research goals.
Links
- Wellcome Image Awards 2011: a story behind every picture
- Medical Research Council Technology
- Optical projection tomography (OPT)