E. Coli and the Sugar Nazis: the Lac Operon.

The regulation of transcription was first worked out in the lowly bacterium E Coli by a couple of French guys named Jacob and Monod, who won the Nobel Prize. Their work laid the foundation for what we know about genetic regulation, and you probably read about them and their work in high school. Of course, you were on drugs then, and you’ve completely dumped that stuff from your cache, so we’re going to go over it again.