Early Modern Archeology and Genetic Information at the Science Day












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            The fourth annual Scientia Pragensis event took place as usually on the last Friday of Nov

            University of Economics, Prague. The science day hosted speakers from Prague’s institution
            education, who gave talks about the most recent developments and findings in their fields.
            University was represented by Dr. Václav Matoušek from the Faculty of Humanities and Profe

            Sedláček from the 2nd Faculty of Medicine.
            During the event, a total of ten speakers took the floor on November 26 in the auditorium 
            of Economics. Each institution – Czech University of Life Sciences, Czech Technical Univer

            University, University of Economics and the Institute of Chemical Technology – was represe
            researchers.

            In the morning section, doc. PhDr. Václav Matoušek, CSc. from the Faculty of Humanities pr
            research in archeology. He focuses on the archeological research of the early modern perio
            in the battlefields of the Thirty Years War and industrial archeology.

            Dr. Matoušek divided his talk into two parts, in the first of which he introduced the arch
            the early modern period as a young discipline inspired by both the Czech tradition of the 
            of the Middle Ages and general historical anthropology, mentioning notable experts in the 

            second part, he presented particular research projects that have been undertaken as Master
            dissertations by students of archeology at the Faculty of Humanities.
            Prof. Ing. Zdeněk Sedláček, DrSc. from the Institute of Biology and Medical Genetics of th

            Medicine and the General Teaching Hospital represented the natural science branch of the u
            research, he focuses on molecular genetics of humans, specifically on genetic defects caus
            diseases, genetic predispositions for cancer and the genetics of autism and mental retarda

            To introduce the profoundly complex topic, Professor Sedláček started his presentation by 
            the various data we can read in the human genetic information. Genome analysis has for exa
            a rather surprising fact that our gene count is not significantly higher than that of less

            organisms and that almost a half of our genome consists of parasitical repetitive sequence
            differ from each other not only by occasional nucleotide exchanges, but also by larger-sca
            rearrangements. 

             (Lucie Kettnerová)

            Translation: Jaroslav Švelch