Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

by Matt Ridley

Hardcover, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

599.935

Genres

Collection

Non-Fiction

Publication

FOURTH ESTATE (1999), Edition: First Edition, 352 pages

Description

The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Matt Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member neurodrew

Ridley writes a very good introduction to genetics, developing some very sophisticated ideas in a readable format. Prion genes are discussed in the context of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The issue of genetics of intelligence and language are discussed clearly, as are tracing genteic

evolution, cancer genetics, and growth suppressor genes. The author is a science journalist, and thus has a clear eye for controversial or trendy topics, but the science is very good and the book is a pleasure to read

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LibraryThing member norabelle414

As a genetics major in college, I've read many, many books on the subject, and this was by far my favorite. It's not dumbed down and all of its explanations are thorough and specific. However, it's still a really fun and amusing read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in learning a little about

genetics, especially the political and ethical aspects.

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LibraryThing member psiloiordinary

Excellent.

A tour of various lines of evidence in the now huge subject of genetics and evolutionary biology. The book uses the human genome and our chromosome structure as scaffolding and hangs a wide range of fascinating anecdotes from it.

Written for the layman in a clear and witty tone. Eloquent

and simple, not an easy trick to pull off.

Find out more about yourself. This book dispels many of the over-hyped scare-mongering myths in a simple and easy to understand way.

A great first read from this author for me - he is now on my "read all this guy's books" list.

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LibraryThing member voodoochilli

I really enjoyed this book. I would say it is so far the best book I have read this year and a great introduction to genetics. Quite a lot of the stuff in this book has been covered in other books I have read, most notably by Richard Dawkins, however the writing was fresh and I learned a hell of a

lot of stuff throughout this book. For example, did you know that the placenta is actually a parasite, the result of male antagonistic genes battling the female's X chromosomes by redirecting more resources to the baby? And in response the female releases insulin in an attempt to counter this intrusion and moderate the resources? I didn't! What about the fact that male sperm has an agenda and that chemicals within enter the female's brain, lowering her sex drive and adjusting the timings of her menstrual cycle in an attempt to stop her mating with others? At the same time, the female's genes have attacked the poor Y chromosome to such an extent that it has all but shut down, being a tiny little stub of a gene. Fascinating!

Many issues are explored in this book, from reproduction, disease to Eugenics and the politics of science and academia. There is also quite a bit of history, and not just the usual mention of Darwin on the Galapagos islands with his finches. There were many occasions in this book when I stopped to read a paragraph out to my wife who was also fascinated.

My only minor criticism of this book would be that the final chapter seems slightly rushed. Additionally, I don't like it when authors start name dropping a lot of people (particularly the self declared intellectuals we call philosophers). I find name dropping is often used as a diversion from fact, and I feel the last chapter lacked some of the magic of the 22 chapters before it. I feel the author did this in an attempt to cover too many topics and round the book with with a nice conclusion, one that wasn't needed. You see, each chapter tells the story of a chromosome! The book is accessible but does get progressively more difficult and there is quite a bit of genetic code mentioned, but most people will not have a problem understanding it since the book does educate so well.

Written at the turn of the century, the book is 10 years old and with the exception of the first human genome being transcribed, to a lay person like me it doesn't seem dated at all. I have since ordered more books on the subject and I am once again interested in evolutionary biology! I am now reading The prehistory of the mind : a search for the origins of art, religion, and science By Steven Mithen.

The book just missed 5 stars for me as I feel the final chapter didn't quite gel with the rest, however this book is on par with any book by Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, Marcus Chown, Richard Feynman or any other well known popular science writer you can name. If you are interested in science, biology or evolution just a little bit then read this, you won't be disappointed.

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LibraryThing member Ella_Jill

This book on genetics has as many chapters as humans have pairs of chromosomes. In each chapter the author chooses an interesting gene from the pair at hand and talks about it. I’ve learned lots of interesting information from this book, both about how genes work (the author explains how they get

turned on and off by hormones and other chemicals in the person’s bloodstream) and just various fascinating facts about how human body and brain function. For instance, Ridley talks about a gene which allows young children to assimilate grammar without instruction, which gets turned off later on because apparently the ability to learn foreign languages easily has not been an important factor in the survival of our species. In another chapter he describes a gene that controls the production of a protein that regulates the blood flow in the brain. According to various studies, the more of this protein people have the more they’re likely to prefer a calm, leisurely-paced lifestyle. But when people have less of it, they like to keep busy and are more adventurous because activity and new experiences quicken the pulse and keep their brain adequately supplied with blood. On the extreme end of this are people who like living on the edge. This made me remember a book about Everest climbers by Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air): when he asked them why they kept doing this, more than one replied that they feel sleepy and lethargic when living a “normal” life. Perhaps, it has something to do with this particular gene. Ridley also explains why many people like eating sweet and/or fatty foods when upset – apparently, it triggers, through a chain of chemical events, the production of endorphins, the same chemical the human brain produces naturally when one is in a good mood, and so eating these foods directly lifts the mood, and it feels natural to a person! In another chapter the author writes that stress is the most harmful thing to a person’s health and that, according to research done both in the labs on control groups and in life (on civil servants in Great Britain and millions of employees of Bell Telephone Company in the US), what causes the most stress in people is being ordered around. Apparently, when a person feels important and in control, it boosts his mood and doesn’t allow him to really experience stress, no matter what the demands on him/her, whereas the opposite situation has the opposite effect. For instance, Ridley writes that a janitor is 4 times more likely to suffer from a heart attack than a government minister. And even if the minister is overweight, has high blood pressure or is a smoker, he’s still less likely to get a heart attack than a lean, low-blood-pressure, non-smoking janitor! The author also describes an experiment where two groups of people were given the same task, but the first group was given a free hand about how they were to do it, while the second group was given a set of detailed instructions, and the level of cortisol (a chemical equivalent with stress) in the bloodstream of the members of the 2nd group increased much more than that of the 1st group. I take from this that control freak bosses present the greatest danger to humanity, more than serial murderers, and should be rounded up and placed in positions where they don’t get to supervise anybody :). An interesting book.

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LibraryThing member fluteflute

Intriguing book, covering a range of topics. However difficult for me to follow all of the detail (not necessarily a problem) and now slightly out of date.

LibraryThing member yapete

Matt Ridley is one the best science writers. The structure of the book is very clever and the writing is very engaging. Highly recommended.

LibraryThing member l8amylou

This is an entertaining read that is easy to understand even if you are not familiar with the terminology used in genetics.

LibraryThing member richardbsmith

This is a good introduction to issues involving genetic research and policy. There is a brief survey of basic genetics in the book's introduction, but I finished the book with a peeked interest in genetics - but not a much better understanding of genetics per se.It is highly readable. It conveys

the excitement of the recent and growing discoveries in the field. I hope to re read the book when I have a better grounding in basic genetic principles.

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LibraryThing member yfngoh

Enumerating genetic traits associated with each of 23 genes.

LibraryThing member golfjr

An important book by an excellent scientist and good storyteller

LibraryThing member bookcrazed

Each chapter features the characteristics of one of the 23 pair of human chromosomes, not attempting to give an exhaustive review, but rather to give a taste of some of the things that are known about it. Ridley is a great science writer for the untutored-but-interested reader. He has a gift for

breaking down a complex subject into bite-size pieces. This book deserves its bestseller status. (May 2008)

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LibraryThing member clitchfi22

Found the book very interesting, picked the book up my freshmen year of college a couple years ago and just recently impulsively decided to read it. Though now I have a few years of biology under my belt the book was still very interesting. Even those with little knowledge of genetics this book is

still an excellent read. Riley decode the story of the human genome for the reader and gives a good over view of what each of the 23 chromosomes correlate to according to what we know now about genetics. ...good book would recommend

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LibraryThing member MarkBeronte

think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life.

Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Matt Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.

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LibraryThing member Michelle_Bales

Ridley's book presents some very interesting ideas and theories about genetics and inheritance. The question of Nature vs. Nurture looms large. Some of the facts in this book are kind of freaky. For example, the war between the X and the Y chromosomes is hard to wrap my brain around. Ridley's

writing style is very British, and some of the references he makes are completely lost on me (perhaps because I am not British?). It took me a few chapters to get used to his writing style. However, then the book became a page-turner. Not all of the chapters are equally interesting. Ridley is extremely opinionated and does not openly admit it. This makes me wonder about everything he has presented. I would like to do some fact-checking of some of his assertions.

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LibraryThing member satyridae

Ridley seems to me to be an heir of Asimov. He's made genes both accessible and laugh-out-loud funny. This breezy, informative book left me both enlightened and amused. The chapter on Hox genes alone is worth the price of admission. Not to mention the digression into the naming conventions of

geneticists- f'rinstance, there are fruit fly genes called 'hedgehog', 'sonic hedgehog', 'tiggywinkle' and 'warthog'. Honest. "Hedgehog is a so-called segment-polarity gene, which means it is expressed in every segment, but only in the rear half thereof. So if you move a hedgehog-expressing piece of tissue into the anterior half of the wing segment, you get a fly with a sort of mirror-image wing with two front halves fused back to back in the middle and two back halves on the outsides." I loved this book.

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LibraryThing member JohnAGoldsmith

Great popular science book!

LibraryThing member vguy

Not a new book but still listed as one of the best overviews. In fact tells about a lot more than genomes: learning, the nature of scientific truth, basis of morals, the road towards cancer cure, origins of human intelligence - the whole shebang. He gets slated here and there as a Right wing

thub-tumper, but there’s little trace of that here. And he writes of complex matters with refreshing translucency.

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LibraryThing member snash

Some parts of this book were very enlightening, thought provoking, and awe inspiring. Other times when writing about something I knew about, the treatment was simplistic. The author also displays some prejudice on topics of nurture and psychotherapy.

LibraryThing member KarenDuff

A really interesting read, well presented and researched. It is not laden with scientific jargon making it easily accessible to those without a background in science.

LibraryThing member librisissimo

By a journalist / science editor rather than a scientist, this is an interesting and readable excursion into the mysteries of DNA and the human genome. Organized on the principle of discussing one gene per chromosome pair, each chapter explores what is known (or surmised) about what makes us

human.
(Although Ridley is not a "believer" in Intelligent Design, he strays into validating the concept of a Creator from time to time. Compare to Behe's "Darwin's Black Box".)

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LibraryThing member Eric_the_Hamster

I find Matt Ridley's writing to be comprehensible without being patronising. He makes an interesting subject fascinating.

LibraryThing member LonLucePolak

A clear and concise account of the state of dna research of today

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