Temple Doctor Comes Up With Way To Use Cadaver DNA To Teach Med Students About Genetics
By Suzanne Monaghan
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Cadavers have long been an important resource for anatomy teaching in medical school. Now, they are also at the forefront of cutting-edge genetics teaching.
Professors at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University used cadaver DNA to educate medical students about genetics.
They are the first to explore this technique, which is aimed at filling a critical gap between the use of genetics in medical care and the training of future doctors.
"Physicians need to learn anatomy. Now they also need to learn genetics because genetics is beginning to permeate in almost every aspect of medical care," says Dr. Glenn Gerhard with Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine.
His team spent several months perfecting the procedure for how to successful isolate intact DNA from cadaver tissue. The students were then able to examine the DNA to see how individual genetics affect traits and disease.
"This really is the first time that genetics was really brought on a large scale to a whole medical school class to try to integrate the genetics with the anatomy and the biochemistry teaching."
The paper was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
