Who are we? (What are we is another matter we won’t get into right now.) Who are we? Do we divine the answer by sequencing our respective genomes? Or by chronicling the people and events that preceded us? Speaking strictly for myself, I expect that I am a consequence of both the DNA double-helix sequence in all my cells and the impact of the people who impinged on my life by one or more other mechanisms. My mother and father contributed both ways. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Mary Lyon, Barbara McClintock, and Bob Dylan, among others, contributed as well.

The point is that I am who I am by virtue of the influence and thoughtfulness of many other people. Does it help to itemize the others? Which others? Those immediately adjacent to you? Or, as well, those who reached you merely in words printed on a page or in words broadcast through a microphone. Or, perhaps, words shared with you across a desk or whispered in your ear. For those who might want to know, I am a geneticist because of the words, ideas, and possibilities broadcast by Michael Mattei and Marshall Nirenberg in their November 1961 article in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that declared a triplet of uracil in RNA encoded phenylalanine in proteins. I am also a geneticist because my mentors, John Littlefield and Lewis Holmes, inserted their genetic notions into my life. Ideas and past events shaped my life no less than my parental DNA. (I also trust that I had something to do with it!)

The notion that history and biography can be important to identifying and nurturing scientists is, of course, not new. On the other hand, there are precious few circumstances for regularly, systematically making such considerations available to incipient or novice geneticists.

Who we are and what we do is a function of what has gone on before us and who carried out those events. In this regard, one of the purposes of Genetics in Medicine is the instigation and embellishment of the clinical and laboratory prowess of young geneticists by presenting the biographies of earlier geneticists and by recounting earlier genetic developments. For example, ultimately, we will chronicle Jerome Lejeune and his contributions to genetic syndromology, including his identification of trisomy 21 as the cause of the Down syndrome. And we will regularly revisit other syndromes, such as the Coffin-Lowry Syndrome.

In this issue of Genetics in Medicine, Dr. Grange Coffin connects the past and the present by writing on the Coffin-Lowry Syndrome, a heritable disorder emblematic of genetic syndromology. He accomplishes his task in three steps:

  • Clinical Update: a reconsideration of the original cases with the addition of new clinical, pathologic, and laboratory data.

  • Literature Update: an itemization of selected articles about the disorder written since its first description.

  • Molecular Update: a review of the genomic and proteomic insights that have derived from the study of the syndrome.

The purpose of this editorial is 2-fold. The first purpose is to alert readers to Dr. Coffin’s article as the initial contribution to the Genetic Legacies section of the Journal. The second purpose is to give notice to our readers that we welcome additional manuscripts of the same type. Each article will contain all three elements indicated above, namely, Clinical Update, Literature Update, and Molecular Update. Other types of manuscripts dealing with the legacy—that is, the history and biography—of medical genetics are also encouraged.