Download or read book The Century of the Gene written by Evelyn Fox KELLER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful, profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular biology in the twentieth century, the century of the gene. Not just a chronicle of biology’s progress from gene to genome in one hundred years, The Century of the Gene also calls our attention to the surprising ways these advances challenge the familiar picture of the gene most of us still entertain. Keller shows us that the very successes that have stirred our imagination have also radically undermined the primacy of the gene—word and object—as the core explanatory concept of heredity and development. She argues that we need a new vocabulary that includes concepts such as robustness, fidelity, and evolvability. But more than a new vocabulary, a new awareness is absolutely crucial: that understanding the components of a system (be they individual genes, proteins, or even molecules) may tell us little about the interactions among these components. With the Human Genome Project nearing its first and most publicized goal, biologists are coming to realize that they have reached not the end of biology but the beginning of a new era. Indeed, Keller predicts that in the new century we will witness another Cambrian era, this time in new forms of biological thought rather than in new forms of biological life.
Download or read book Century of the Gene written by Evelyn Fox Keller and published by Turtleback. This book was released on 2002-04-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful, profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular biology in the twentieth century, the century of the gene.
Download or read book The Gene written by Siddhartha Mukherjee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History Now includes an excerpt from Siddhartha Mukherjee’s new book Song of the Cell! From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a fascinating history of the gene and “a magisterial account of how human minds have laboriously, ingeniously picked apart what makes us tick” (Elle). “Sid Mukherjee has the uncanny ability to bring together science, history, and the future in a way that is understandable and riveting, guiding us through both time and the mystery of life itself.” —Ken Burns “Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee dazzled readers with his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies in 2010. That achievement was evidently just a warm-up for his virtuoso performance in The Gene: An Intimate History, in which he braids science, history, and memoir into an epic with all the range and biblical thunder of Paradise Lost” (The New York Times). In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices. “Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” (The Washington Post). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome. “A fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making us who we are—and what our manipulation of those genes might mean for our future” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), The Gene is the revelatory and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. “The Gene is a book we all should read” (USA TODAY).
Download or read book Gene Environment Interactions written by Moyra Smith and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2020-01-24 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gene Environment Interactions: Nature and Nurture in the Twenty-first Century offers a rare, synergistic view of ongoing revelations in gene environment interaction studies, drawing together key themes from epigenetics, microbiomics, disease etiology, and toxicology to illuminate pathways for clinical translation and the paradigm shift towards precision medicine. Across eleven chapters, Dr. Smith discusses interactions with the environment, human adaptations to environmental stimuli, pathogen encounters across the centuries, epigenetic modulation of gene expression, transgenerational inheritance, the microbiome's intrinsic effects on human health, and the gene-environment etiology of cardiovascular, metabolic, psychiatric, behavioral and monogenic disorders. Later chapters illuminate how our new understanding of gene environment interactions are driving advances in precision medicine and novel treatments. In addition, the book's author shares strategies to support clinical translation of these scientific findings to improve heath literacy among the general population. Offers a thorough, interdisciplinary discussion on recent revelations from gene environment interaction studies Illuminates environmental factors affecting disease-gene etiology and treatment Supports the clinical translation of gene environment interaction findings into novel therapeutics and precision medicine
Download or read book The Century of the Gene written by Evelyn Fox Keller and published by . This book was released on 2000-12-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Selfish Gene written by Richard Dawkins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science
Download or read book The Meanings of the Gene written by Celeste Michelle Condit and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Meanings of the Gene is a compelling look at societal hopes and fears about genetics in the course of the twentieth century. The work of scientists and doctors in advancing genetic research and its applications has been accompanied by plenty of discussion in the popular press—from Good Housekeeping and Forbes to Ms. and the Congressional Record—about such topics as eugenics, sterilization, DNA, genetic counseling, and sex selection. By demonstrating the role of rhetoric and ideology in public discussions about genetics, Condit raises the controversial question, Who shapes decisions about genetic research and its consequences for humans—scientists, or the public? Analyzing hundreds of stories from American magazines—and, later, television news—from the 1910s to the 1990s, Condit identifies three central and enduring public worries about genetics: that genes are deterministic arbiters of human fate; that genetics research can be used for discriminatory ends; and that advances in genetics encourage perfectionistic thinking about our children. Other key public concerns that Condit highlights are the complexity of genetic decision-making and potential for invasion of privacy; conflict over the human genetic code and experimentation with DNA; and family genetics and reproductive decisions. Her analysis reveals a persistent debate in the popular media between themes of genetic determinism (such as eugenics) and more egalitarian views that place genes within the complexity of biological and social life. The Meanings of the Gene offers an insightful view of our continuing efforts to grapple with our biological natures and to define what it means, and will mean in the future, to be human.
Download or read book Genetic Crossroads written by Elise K. Burton and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle East plays a major role in the history of genetic science. Early in the twentieth century, technological breakthroughs in human genetics coincided with the birth of modern Middle Eastern nation-states, who proclaimed that the region's ancient history—as a cradle of civilizations and crossroads of humankind—was preserved in the bones and blood of their citizens. Using letters and publications from the 1920s to the present, Elise K. Burton follows the field expeditions and hospital surveys that scrutinized the bodies of tribal nomads and religious minorities. These studies, geneticists claim, not only detect the living descendants of biblical civilizations but also reveal the deeper past of human evolution. Genetic Crossroads is an unprecedented history of human genetics in the Middle East, from its roots in colonial anthropology and medicine to recent genome sequencing projects. It illuminates how scientists from Turkey to Yemen, Egypt to Iran, transformed genetic data into territorial claims and national origin myths. Burton shows why such nationalist appropriations of genetics are not local or temporary aberrations, but rather the enduring foundations of international scientific interest in Middle Eastern populations to this day.
Download or read book The Gene written by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-01-26 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few concepts played a more important role in twentieth-century life sciences than that of the gene. Yet at this moment, the field of genetics is undergoing radical conceptual transformation, and some scientists are questioning the very usefulness of the concept of the gene, arguing instead for more systemic perspectives. The time could not be better, therefore, for Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Staffan Müller-Wille's magisterial history of the concept of the gene. Though the gene has long been the central organizing theme of biology, both conceptually and as an object of study, Rheinberger and Müller-Wille conclude that we have never even had a universally accepted, stable definition of it. Rather, the concept has been in continual flux—a state that, they contend, is typical of historically important and productive scientific concepts. It is that very openness to change and manipulation, the authors argue, that made it so useful: its very mutability enabled it to be useful while the technologies and approaches used to study and theorize about it changed dramatically.
Download or read book The Biotech Century written by Jeremy Rifkin and published by TarcherPerigee. This book was released on 1999-04-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores current developments in the fields of biochips, cloning, and genetic mapping.
Download or read book Blueprint with a new afterword written by Robert Plomin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A top behavioral geneticist makes the case that DNA inherited from our parents at the moment of conception can predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses. In Blueprint, behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin describes how the DNA revolution has made DNA personal by giving us the power to predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses from birth. A century of genetic research shows that DNA differences inherited from our parents are the consistent lifelong sources of our psychological individuality—the blueprint that makes us who we are. Plomin reports that genetics explains more about the psychological differences among people than all other factors combined. Nature, not nurture, is what makes us who we are. Plomin explores the implications of these findings, drawing some provocative conclusions—among them that parenting styles don't really affect children's outcomes once genetics is taken into effect. This book offers readers a unique insider's view of the exciting synergies that came from combining genetics and psychology. The paperback edition has a new afterword by the author.
Download or read book She Has Her Mother s Laugh written by Carl Zimmer and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Finalist "Science book of the year"—The Guardian One of New York Times 100 Notable Books for 2018 One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2018 One of Kirkus's Best Books of 2018 One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018 One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018 “Extraordinary”—New York Times Book Review "Magisterial"—The Atlantic "Engrossing"—Wired "Leading contender as the most outstanding nonfiction work of the year"—Minneapolis Star-Tribune Celebrated New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities... But, Zimmer writes, “Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are—our appearance, our height, our penchants—in inconceivably subtle ways.” Heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors—using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates—but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer’s lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it. Weaving historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world’s best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.
Download or read book The Genome Factor written by Dalton Conley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For a century, social scientists have avoided genetics like the plague. But in the past decade, a small but intrepid group of economists, political scientists, and sociologists have harnessed the genomics revolution to paint a more complete picture of human social life than ever before. The Genome Factor describes the latest astonishing discoveries being made at the scientific frontier where genomics and the social sciences intersect. The Genome Factor reveals that there are real genetic differences by racial ancestry--but ones that don't conform to what we call black, white, or Latino. Genes explain a significant share of who gets ahead in society and who does not, but instead of giving rise to a genotocracy, genes often act as engines of mobility that counter social disadvantage. An increasing number of us are marrying partners with similar education levels as ourselves, but genetically speaking, humans are mixing it up more than ever before with respect to mating and reproduction. These are just a few of the many findings presented in this illuminating and entertaining book, which also tackles controversial topics such as genetically personalized education and the future of reproduction in a world where more and more of us are taking advantage of cheap genotyping services like 23andMe to find out what our genes may hold in store for ourselves and our children. The Genome Factor shows how genomics is transforming the social sciences--and how social scientists are integrating both nature and nurture into a unified, comprehensive understanding of human behavior at both the individual and society-wide levels."--
Download or read book Genome written by Matt Ridley and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the reductionist danger in equating inheritability with inevitability.” — The New Yorker The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Matt Ridley’s Genome is the book that explains it all: what it is, how it works, and what it portends for the future 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, 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.
Download or read book Biosocial Surveys written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-01-06 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biosocial Surveys analyzes the latest research on the increasing number of multipurpose household surveys that collect biological data along with the more familiar interviewerâ€"respondent information. This book serves as a follow-up to the 2003 volume, Cells and Surveys: Should Biological Measures Be Included in Social Science Research? and asks these questions: What have the social sciences, especially demography, learned from those efforts and the greater interdisciplinary communication that has resulted from them? Which biological or genetic information has proven most useful to researchers? How can better models be developed to help integrate biological and social science information in ways that can broaden scientific understanding? This volume contains a collection of 17 papers by distinguished experts in demography, biology, economics, epidemiology, and survey methodology. It is an invaluable sourcebook for social and behavioral science researchers who are working with biosocial data.
Download or read book The Laws of Medicine written by Siddhartha Mukherjee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential, required reading for doctors and patients alike: A Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the world’s premiere cancer researchers reveals an urgent philosophy on the little-known principles that govern medicine—and how understanding these principles can empower us all. Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences? Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine. Brimming with fascinating historical details and modern medical wonders, this important book is a fascinating glimpse into the struggles and Eureka! moments that people outside of the medical profession rarely see. Written with Dr. Mukherjee’s signature eloquence and passionate prose, The Laws of Medicine is a critical read, not just for those in the medical profession, but for everyone who is moved to better understand how their health and well-being is being treated. Ultimately, this book lays the groundwork for a new way of understanding medicine, now and into the future.
Download or read book The Genealogical Science written by Nadia Abu El-Haj and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume analyses the scientific work and social implications of the flourishing field of genetic history. The author examines genetic history's working assumptions about culture and nature, identity and biology, and the individual and the collective.
