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A Bit of History 133

regardless of their academic level. The consequence of that black night for the
national culture was the dismissal and resignation of 700 of the best professors
of Argentina’s universities, who continued their brilliant careers abroad, depriv-
ing our country of the most lucid minds of academic scientific knowledge.
After a brief democratic interregnum, from 1973 to 1976, during which it was
not possible to recover what was lost, a new coup d’état, much more violent and
merciless than the previous ones, subsumed the country and its entire scien-
tific community in a long period of terror, persecution, and censorship (https://
www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/opinion/the-long-shadow-of- argentinas-dicta-
torship.html?_r=0).
It was not until 1983, with the definitive return to democracy, that many of
those persecuted researchers and the new generations formed abroad returned
to our country. With this process, the recovery of scientific-technological devel-
opment of our institutes and universities began. Many of these profession-
als began with the first research lines in molecular biology applied to human
genetics. From these research projects emerged the first PhD students in molec-
ular genetics in our country, and the authors of this chapter are part thereof.
Our thesis directors were also young, just a few years older than us, and they
came back with the push of their postdocs and the support of the laboratories
that they had worked for in Europe or the United States.

A few years later, toward the end of the 1980s, molecular genetics began to
be used to diagnose diseases in different countries. The technologies used
at that time were essentially manual, that is, they were not automated, and
required an almost artisanal style of work, which also demanded obtaining
large amounts of DNA. This meant that significant blood samples (from 10
to 20 ml) were required from the patient. The DNA was then digested or cut
with restriction enzymes or scissors that only cut a certain section of the DNA.
Subsequently, vertical or horizontal electrophoresis were performed to differ-
entiate specific bands that correlated with the result search for the diagnosed
patient (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/probe/docs/techrflp/). In many cases,
tedious transfer and hybridization methodologies (technically known as the
3
Southern blot method) were applied in which radioactive material was used
(Southern, 1975). To observe our results, we had to enter an improvised dark-
room somewhere in the laboratory to reveal an autoradiography impacted by
radioactive signals, which had been incorporated into specific DNA sites, and
whose signal indicated the final result. Healthy patients presented one band
pattern and the other carriers or patients diagnosed with a disease presented
a different one, and in that way the first diagnoses by molecular genetics were
determined.

3 A procedure for identifying and measuring the amount of a specific DNA se quence or gene
in a mixed extract.