The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread to discuss "genetics". Any books that are non fiction or historical fiction based upon this subject area may be discussed and added.

There is no self promotion allowed on The History Book Club site.

Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors

Nicholas Wade

Publisher's Synopsis:

Based on a groundbreaking synthesis of recent scientific findings, critically acclaimed New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade tells a bold and provocative new story of the history of our ancient ancestors and the evolution of human nature.In wonderfully lively and lucid prose, Wade reveals the answers that researchers have ingeniously developed to so many puzzles. This will be the most talked about science book of the season

This book is interesting because it is so different. It is not non fiction and it is not historical fiction; but worth noting.

Genre Type: Science Fiction, Speculative fiction, Dystopian

Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood


Publisher's Synopsis:

Margaret Atwood's new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.

This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.

The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter.

Awards:

Man Booker Prize Nominee (2003), Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction (2004), Giller Prize Nominee (2003)

Generation: The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unraveled the Secrets of Sex, Life, and Growth

Matthew Cobb

Goodreads Synopsis:

Four rival anatomists and their race to answer the age-old question: Where does life come from?

Generation is the story of the exciting, largely forgotten decade during the seventeenth century when a group of young scientists—Jan Swammerdam, the son of a Protestant apothecary, Nils Stensen (also known as Steno), a Danish anatomist who first discovered the human tear duct, Reinier de Graaf, the attractive and brilliant son of a rich and successful Catholic architect, and Antoni Leeuwenhoek, a self-taught draper—dared to challenge thousands of years of orthodox thinking about where life comes from. By meticulous experimentation, dissection, and observation with the newly invented microscope, they showed that like breeds like, that all animals come from an egg, that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation, and that there are millions of tiny, wriggling “eels” in semen. However, their ultimate inability to fully understand the evidence that was in front of them led to a fatal mistake. As a result, the final leap in describing the process of reproduction—which would ultimately give birth to the science of genetics—took nearly two centuries for humanity to achieve. Including previously untranslated documents, Generation interweaves the personal stories of these scientists against a backdrop of the Dutch “Golden Age.” It is a riveting account of the audacious men who swept away old certainties and provided the foundation for much of our current understanding of the living world.

This is supposed to be a standard biography on Darwin (two volumes):

by Janet Browne

Can't forget:
Charles Darwin

Thanks for the adds.

Bentley wrote: "Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors

[bookcover:Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors]Nicholas Wade

Publisher's Synopsi..."

I listened to this one on audiobook and gave it a big five stars. It was fascinating.

Here are some books with different perspectives on the contentious issue of genetically modified foods, with excerpts from the Goodreads blurbs.

Genetically Modified Foods

This lively collection of authoritative articles encompasses the many points of contention in the debate. The editors have organized the essays to deal first with the history and the science of genetically modified foods. The next section focuses on the morality of modifying organisms for human use. What factors should be considered in making value judgments about this technology? Succeeding sections include articles discussing religious attitudes toward genetically modified food, legal issues involving patenting and environmental damage, risk assessment, and possible environmental threats and benefits.

Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Foods

Addressing the fear and mistrust of genetically modified foods, Fedoroff--a leading geneticist and recognized expert in biotechnology--and science writer Brown, weave a narrative rich in history, technology, and science to dispel the many myths and misunderstandings.

Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating

Without knowing it, Americans eat genetically modified (GM) food everyday. While the food and chemical industries claim that GMO food is safe, a considerable amount of evidence shows otherwise. In Seeds of Deception, Jeffrey Smith, a former executive with the leading independent laboratory testing for GM presence in foods, documents these serious health dangers and explains how corporate influence and government collusion have been used to cover them up.

by Michael Ruse(no photo)

by Nina V. Fedoroff (no photo)

by Jeffrey M. Smith

by Horace Freeland Judson

Synopsis

In this classic, originally published 25 years ago and now reprinted with a new Afterword by the author on how he came to write the book, Judson tells the story of the birth and early development of molecular biology, in the US, the UK and France. In particular, the fascinating account of the remarkable golden period from the revelation of the double helix structure of DNA through to cracking the genetic code and solving the basic problems of how genes are regulated, is told largely in the words of the main players in the unfolding drama, all of whom were interviewed extensively by Judson in preparing this acclaimed volume. As well as the new Afterword that appears here for the first time, the current edition contains the material added by the author to the earlier "Expanded Edition" (CSHL Press 1996) on some of the principal figures involved, particularly Rosalind Franklin, together with the Afterword added at that time which sketches the further development of molecular biology into the era of recombinant DNA.(less)

by Melvin Konner (no photo).

Konner is both an MD and an anthropologist. This book is about genetics in that it is about how genes constrain human behavior. It is one of my favorite books.

Thanks Kathy for the add.

Another classic by the learned Richard Dawkins.

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

by [author:Richard Dawkins|1194

Synopsis

People commonly view evolution as a process of competition between individuals—known as “survival of the fittest”—with the individual representing the “unit of selection.” Richard Dawkins offers a controversial reinterpretation of that idea in The Extended Phenotype, now being reissued to coincide with the publication of the second edition of his highly-acclaimed The Selfish Gene. He proposes that we look at evolution as a battle between genes instead of between whole organisms. We can then view changes in phenotypes—the end products of genes, like eye color or leaf shape, which are usually considered to increase the fitness of an individual—as serving the evolutionary interests of genes.

Dawkins makes a convincing case that considering one’s body, personality, and environment as a field of combat in a kind of “arms race” between genes fighting to express themselves on a strand of DNA can clarify and extend the idea of survival of the fittest. This influential and controversial book illuminates the complex world of genetics in an engaging, lively manner

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History


by Nicholas Wade

Synopsis:

Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the idea of the biological reality of race, and with it the idea that humans of different races are biologically different from one another. For this understandable reason, the idea has been banished from polite academic conversation. Arguing that race is more than just a social construct can get a scholar run out of town, or at least off campus, on a rail. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory.

Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years—to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes. Race is not a bright-line distinction; by definition it means that the more human populations are kept apart, the more they evolve their own distinct traits under the selective pressure known as Darwinian evolution. For many thousands of years, most human populations stayed where they were and grew distinct, not just in outward appearance but in deeper senses as well.

Wade, the longtime journalist covering genetic advances for The New York Times, draws widely on the work of scientists who have made crucial breakthroughs in establishing the reality of recent human evolution. The most provocative claims in this book involve the genetic basis of human social habits. What we might call middle-class social traits—thrift, docility, nonviolence—have been slowly but surely inculcated genetically within agrarian societies, Wade argues. These “values” obviously had a strong cultural component, but Wade points to evidence that agrarian societies evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in some crucial respects. Also controversial are his findings regarding the genetic basis of traits we associate with intelligence, such as literacy and numeracy, in certain ethnic populations, including the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews.

Wade believes deeply in the fundamental equality of all human peoples. He also believes that science is best served by pursuing the truth without fear, and if his mission to arrive at a coherent summa of what the new genetic science does and does not tell us about race and human history leads straight into a minefield, then so be it. This will not be the last word on the subject, but it will begin a powerful and overdue conversation.

The book definitely sounds worthy of some tire kicking. But the synopsis, methinks, grossly misstates the "consensus view" - whatever that is - when it states human evolution ground to a halt in prehistory.

Either the synopsis, or the book's author, appear to be setting up a straw man, an indication the argument being put forth may not be too strong.

I'm also not so sure what the link is between race and evolutionary development rooted in agrarian society.

One thing that strikes me as dead wrong is the notion that human populations have been static. Even someone with just a cursory understanding of migratory movements over the millennia knows that is flat out wrong when offered as a generalization.

As for this book being the beginning of a powerful and overdue conversation, I smell hype in overdrive. This conversation has been ongoing for some time now and included none other than James Watson, the pioneer in DNA research.

Martin, thank you for your comment and post. And thank you Jerome for the add which will certainly stimulate some comments (pro and con)

Thank you Kathy for all of the adds on these folder's threads.

A little different take on Darwinism.

Beyond Natural Selection

by Robert Wesson (no photo)

Synopsis:

in this broad and highly readable inquiry, Robert Wesson proposes an approach to evolution that is more in harmony with modern science than Darwinism or neoDarwinism. He emphasizes the importance for evolution of inner direction and the self-organizing capacities of life, a view that is better able to account for the chaotic nature of the evolutionary process and the inherent propensity of complex dynamic systems to grow more complex with time. Many examples of plants and animals support this idea, and Wesson includes both carefully documented scientific facts and intriguing anecdotes about the odd aberrations in natural selection.

The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures

by Christine Kenneally

Synopsis:

We are doomed to repeat history if we fail to learn from it, but how are we affected by the forces that are invisible to us? In The Invisible History of the Human Race Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. While some books explore our genetic inheritance and popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy. This book shows how trust is inherited in Africa, silence is passed down in Tasmania, and how the history of nations is written in our DNA. From fateful, ancient encounters to modern mass migrations and medical diagnoses, Kenneally explains how the forces that shaped the history of the world ultimately shape each human who inhabits it.

The Invisible History of the Human Raceis a deeply researched, carefully crafted and provocative perspective on how our stories, psychology, and genetics affect our past and our future.

The Least Likely Man: Marshall Nirenberg and the Discovery of the Genetic Code

by Franklin H Portugal (no photo)

Synopsis:

The genetic code is the Rosetta Stone by which we interpret the 3.3 billion letters of human DNA, the alphabet of life, and the discovery of the code has had an immeasurable impact on science and society. In 1968, Marshall Nirenberg, an unassuming government scientist working at the National Institutes of Health, shared the Nobel Prize for cracking the genetic code. He was the least likely man to make such an earth-shaking discovery, and yet he had gotten there before such members of the scientific elite as James Watson and Francis Crick. How did Nirenberg do it, and why is he so little known?

In The Least Likely Man Franklin Portugal tells the fascinating life story of a famous scientist that most of us have never heard of. Nirenberg did not have a particularly brilliant undergraduate or graduate career. After being hired as a researcher at the NIH, he quietly explored how cells make proteins. Meanwhile, Watson, Crick, and eighteen other leading scientists had formed the "RNA Tie Club" (named after the distinctive ties they wore, each decorated with one of twenty amino acid designs), intending to claim credit for the discovery of the genetic code before they had even worked out the details. They were surprised, and displeased, when Nirenberg announced his preliminary findings of a genetic code at an international meeting in Moscow in 1961.

Drawing on Nirenberg's "lab diaries," Portugal offers an engaging and accessible account of Nirenberg's experimental approach, describes counterclaims by Crick, Watson, and Sidney Brenner, and traces Nirenberg's later switch to an entirely new, even more challenging field. Having won the Nobel for his work on the genetic code, Nirenberg moved on to the next frontier of biological research: how the brain works.

Thx.

The Epigenetics Revolution

by Nessa Carey(no photo)

Synopsis:

At the beginning of this century enormous progress had been made in genetics. The Human Genome Project finished sequencing human DNA. It seemed it was only a matter of time until we had all the answers to the secrets of life on this planet. The cutting-edge of biology, however, is telling us that we still don't even know all of the questions. How is it that, despite each cell in your body carrying exactly the same DNA, you don't have teeth growing out of your eyeballs or toenails on your liver? How is it that identical twins share exactly the same DNA and yet can exhibit dramatic differences in the way that they live and grow? It turns out that cells read the genetic code in DNA more like a script to be interpreted than a mould that replicates the same result each time.

This is epigenetics and it's the fastest-moving field in biology today. The Epigenetics Revolution traces the thrilling path this discipline has taken over the last twenty years. Biologist Nessa Carey deftly explains such diverse phenomena as how queen bees and ants control their colonies, why tortoiseshell cats are always female, why some plants need a period of cold before they can flower, why we age, develop disease and become addicted to drugs, and much more.

Most excitingly, Carey reveals the amazing possibilities for humankind that epigenetics offers for us all - and in the surprisingly near future.

An upcoming book:
Release date: July 7, 2015

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

by Matthew Cobb (no photo)

Synopsis:

Scientists and laypeople alike now know that our genomes contain information that can help us to interpret our evolutionary past. Just a half century ago, this idea was revolutionary. In April 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published in Nature their groundbreaking work revealing the double helix structure of DNA. While this discovery received wide attention from both mainstream media and the academic community, it was just one part of the bigger story in this history of molecular biology. By the mid-1950s, the scientific community confirmed that genes were indeed comprised of DNA; they just needed to crack the genetic code—and the race was on. Life’s Greatest Secret is the full and rich history of this challenge and the characters—many of whom were not biologists—whose work contributed to this grand scientific endeavor: mathematician and father of cybernetics Norbert Wiener, physicist Erwin Schrödinger, information theorist Claude Shannon, and biologists Jacques Monod and Marshall Nirenberg.

In Life’s Greatest Secret, science historian and zoologist Matthew Cobb shows that the race to crack the genetic code was mostly a matter of craft—individuals or small groups struggling with ideas and concepts as much as they were with facts, trying to find the right experiment to answer the right questions, even if they didn’t know what the questions were, and finding that, even when the most definitive answer served mostly to reveal more ignorance, whether in 1953, with Watson and Crick, or in 1961, when Nirenberg and Matthaei showed how DNA codes for specific amino acids, and again and again thereafter, or in 2000, with the first publication of a human genome. Each discovery was a leap forward in our understanding of the natural world and our place within in, akin to the discoveries of Galileo and Einstein in the realm of physics, or the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. And each served to show how much bigger the problem was that anyone had previously imagined, a trend that continues, as Cobb shows, even today, whether we are discussing gene regulation, epigenetics, or GMOs.

Life’s Greatest Secret is a story of ideas and of experimentation, of ingenuity, insight, and dead-ends, in the hunt to make the greatest discovery of twentieth century biology. Ultimately, though, this is a story of humans exploring what it is that makes us human.

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History

by Nicholas Wade

Synopsis:

Drawing on startling new evidence from the human genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story

Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the idea of the biological reality of race, and with it the idea that humans of different races are biologically different from one another. For this understandable reason, the idea has been banished from polite academic conversation. Arguing that race is more than just a social construct can get a scholar run out of town, or at least off campus, on a rail. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory.

Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years—to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes. Race is not a bright-line distinction; by definition it means that the more human populations are kept apart, the more they evolve their own distinct traits under the selective pressure known as Darwinian evolution. For many thousands of years, most human populations stayed where they were and grew distinct, not just in outward appearance but in deeper senses as well.

Wade, the longtime journalist covering genetic advances for The New York Times, draws widely on the work of scientists who have made crucial breakthroughs in establishing the reality of recent human evolution. The most provocative claims in this book involve the genetic basis of human social habits. What we might call middle-class social traits—thrift, docility, nonviolence—have been slowly but surely inculcated genetically within agrarian societies, Wade argues. These “values” obviously had a strong cultural component, but Wade points to evidence that agrarian societies evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in some crucial respects. Also controversial are his findings regarding the genetic basis of traits we associate with intelligence, such as literacy and numeracy, in certain ethnic populations, including the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews.

Wade believes deeply in the fundamental equality of all human peoples. He also believes that science is best served by pursuing the truth without fear, and if his mission to arrive at a coherent summa of what the new genetic science does and does not tell us about race and human history leads straight into a minefield, then so be it. This will not be the last word on the subject, but it will begin a powerful and overdue conversation.

The PKU Paradox: A Short History of a Genetic Disease

by Diane B. Paul (no photo)

Synopsis:

In a lifetime of practice, most physicians will never encounter a single case of PKU. Yet every physician in the industrialized world learns about the disease in medical school and, since the early 1960s, the newborn heel stick test for PKU has been mandatory in many countries. Diane B. Paul and Jeffrey P. Brosco’s beautifully written book explains this paradox.

PKU (phenylketonuria) is a genetic disorder that causes severe cognitive impairment if it is not detected and treated with a strict and difficult diet. Programs to detect PKU and start treatment early are deservedly considered a public health success story. Some have traded on this success to urge expanded newborn screening, defend basic research in genetics, and confront proponents of genetic determinism. In this context, treatment for PKU is typically represented as a simple matter of adhering to a low-phenylalanine diet. In reality, the challenges of living with PKU are daunting.

In this first general history of PKU, a historian and a pediatrician explore how a rare genetic disease became the object of an unprecedented system for routine testing. The PKU Paradox is informed by interviews with scientists, clinicians, policymakers, and individuals who live with the disease. The questions it raises touch on ongoing controversies about newborn screening and what happens to blood samples collected at birth.

The Deeper Genome: Why There Is More to the Human Genome Than Meets the Eye

by John Parrington (no photo)

Synopsis:

Over a decade ago, as the Human Genome Project completed its mapping of the entire human genome, hopes ran high that we would rapidly be able to use our knowledge of human genes to tackle many inherited diseases, and understand what makes us unique among animals. But things didn't turn out that way. For a start, we turned out to have far fewer genes than originally thought - just over 20,000, the same sort of number as a fruit fly or worm. What's more, the
proportion of DNA consisting of genes coding for proteins was a mere 2%. So, was the rest of the genome accumulated 'junk'?

Things have changed since those early heady days of the Human Genome Project. But the emerging picture is if anything far more exciting. In this book, John Parrington explains the key features that are coming to light - some, such as the results of the international ENCODE programme, still much debated and controversial in their scope. He gives an outline of the deeper genome, involving layers of regulatory elements controlling and coordinating the switching on and off of genes; the impact of its 3D geometry; the discovery of a variety of new RNAs playing critical roles; the epigenetic changes influenced by the environment and life experiences that can make identical twins different and be passed on to the next generation; and the clues coming out of comparisons with the genomes of Neanderthals as well as that of chimps about the development of our species.

We are learning more about ourselves, and about the genetic aspects of many diseases. But in its complexity, flexibility, and ability to respond to environmental cues, the human genome is proving to be far more subtle than we ever imagined.

The Genetics of Neurodevelopmental Disorders

by K Mitchell (no photo)

Synopsis:

Neurodevelopmental disorders arise from disturbances to various processes of brain development, which can manifest in diverse ways. They encompass many rare genetic syndromes as well as common, heritable conditions such as intellectual disability, autism, ADHD, schizophrenia and many types of epilepsy. "The Genetics of Neurodevelopmental Disorders" examines recent revolutionary advances in our understanding of the genetics of these disorders, exploring both basic discoveries and the translation of new findings into the clinical setting.

The book begins by examining the genetic architecture and etiology of neurodevelopmental disorders. It describes the striking recent progress in identifying pathogenic mutations, which are grouped here based on the neurodevelopmental processes impacted. Subsequent chapters consider the use of cellular and animal models to elucidate the cascading consequences of such mutations, from molecular and cellular levels to emergent effects on neural circuits, brain systems and subsequent psychological development. The text concludes by examining the important clinical implications of the recent advances in the field, from recognition of the genetic causes in individual patients to development of new treatments and interventions.

A timely synthesis, "The Genetics of Neurodevelopmental Disorders" is a unique and essential resource for neuroscientists, geneticists, neurologists and psychiatrists and an accessible and up-to-date overview for medical and science students.

An upcoming book:
Release date: May 17, 2016

The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Synopsis:

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a magnificent history of the gene and a response to the defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to “read” and “write” our own genetic information?

The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has a written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.

Throughout the narrative, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—cuts like a bright, red line, reminding us of the many questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In superb prose and with an instinct for the dramatic scene, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Thomas Morgan to Crick, Watson and Rosa Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.

As The New Yorker said of The Emperor of All Maladies, “It’s hard to think of many books for a general audience that have rendered any area of modern science and technology with such intelligence, accessibility, and compassion…An extraordinary achievement.” Riveting, revelatory, and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, and an essential preparation for the moral complexity introduced by our ability to create or “write” the human genome, The Gene is a must-read for everyone concerned about the definition and future of humanity. This is the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master.

Thank you, Jerome.

Genomics and Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know

by Michael Snyder (no photo)

Synopsis:

In 2001 the Human Genome Project succeeded in mapping the DNA of humans. This landmark accomplishment launched the field of genomics, the integrated study of all the genes in the human body and the related biomedical interventions that can be tailored to benefit a person's health.

Today genomics, part of a larger movement toward personalized medicine, is poised to revolutionize health care. By cross-referencing an individual's genetic sequence -- their genome -- against known elements of "Big Data," elements of genomics are already being incorporated on a widespread basis, including prenatal disease screening and targeted cancer treatments. With more innovations soon to arrive at the bedside, the promise of the genomics revolution is limitless.

This entry in the What Everyone Needs to Know series offers an authoritative resource on the prospects and realities of genomics and personalized medicine. As this science continues to alter traditional medical paradigms, consumers are faced with additional options and more complicated decisions regarding their health care. This book provides the essential information everyone needs.