For the past 18 months, Fran Gale, Education Development Lead from our Public Engagement team, Jonathan Roberts from our Society and Ethics Research team, and staff from the Wellcome Sanger Institute have been working on producing a specialist text book for 16-19 year olds on genomics. The publication is part of a wider series – Oxford Biology Primers – being produced by Oxford University Press to bridge the gap between A-levels and undergraduate study.

This Primer introduces students to the field of genomics and its applications. It explores topics that are familiar from the curriculum and also introduces new ideas, giving students a first taste of the study of biology beyond school-level and demonstrating how concepts frequently encountered at school are relevant to, and applied in, current research.

The 220-page textbook features chapters on Rare Disease by Sarah Lindsay; Cancer by Phil Jones; Ethics and society by Jonathan Roberts; Pathogens by Julian Parkhill (now University of Cambridge); Parasites by Nancy Holroyd and Faye Rodgers; Human Evolution by Michal Szpak, Chris Tyler-Smith, and Yali Xue; and Sequencing technology by Lia Chappell.

Published in June 2020, it is available to buy at Blackwells, Amazon, and other outlets.
ISBN: 9780198848387

Public Engagement’s education team will be purchasing several copies to share with our partner schools as part of our schools engagement programme when the Campus reopens after the Covid pandemic.

“ It’s so exciting to see this finally published! It’s going to be a very useful tool for anyone studying A-level biology and thinking of pursuing this further at university. The chapters cover research topics that are central to the work that happens at the Wellcome Genome Campus and are written by experts in their fields. It has been such a great experience collaborating with different scientists across campus to bring this all together.
Fran Gale, Education Development Lead, Wellcome Genome Campus Public Engagement