A history of pharmacogenomics related to anesthesiology

Abstract

Medical genetics began with the twentieth century rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's nineteenth century work on plant genetics (Weber,Pharmacogenetics, 1997). In the early 1900s, British scientist Archibald Garrod made the first major advance in human genetics by identifying inborn errors of metabolism as a recessive trait (Garrod,Inborn errors of metabolism, 1909), leading to George Beadle and Edward Tatum's 1941 promulgation of the 'one gene, one enzyme' theory (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 27:499-506, 1941). In a landmark 1949 paper (Science 110:543-8, 1949), Linus Pauling's group linked sickle cell anemia to a specific protein derangement, the first proof that genetic changes could produce human disease. This set the stage for the birth of pharmacogenetics, described by Arno Motulsky in 1957 (J Am Med Assoc 165:835-7, 1957), named by Friedrich Vogel in 1959 (Inn Med U Kinderheilk 12:52-125, 1959), and established by Werner Kalow's monograph in 1962 (Kalow,Pharmacogenetics; heredity and the response to drugs, 1962). The next sections of this history provide exemplars of pharmacogenetic discoveries having major implications in anesthesia.