Download or read book Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is growing enthusiasm in the scientific community about the prospect of mapping and sequencing the human genome, a monumental project that will have far-reaching consequences for medicine, biology, technology, and other fields. But how will such an effort be organized and funded? How will we develop the new technologies that are needed? What new legal, social, and ethical questions will be raised? Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome is a blueprint for this proposed project. The authors offer a highly readable explanation of the technical aspects of genetic mapping and sequencing, and they recommend specific interim and long-range research goals, organizational strategies, and funding levels. They also outline some of the legal and social questions that might arise and urge their early consideration by policymakers.
Download or read book The Material Gene written by Kelly E. Happe and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-05-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2014 Diamond Anniversary Book Award Finalist for the 2014 National Communications Association Critical and Cultural Studies Division Book of the Year Award In 2000, the National Human Genome Research Institute announced the completion of a “draft” of the human genome, the sequence information of nearly all 3 billion base pairs of DNA. Since then, interest in the hereditary basis of disease has increased considerably. In The Material Gene, Kelly E. Happe considers the broad implications of this development by treating “heredity” as both a scientific and political concept. Beginning with the argument that eugenics was an ideological project that recast the problems of industrialization as pathologies of gender, race, and class, the book traces the legacy of this ideology in contemporary practices of genomics. Delving into the discrete and often obscure epistemologies and discursive practices of genomic scientists, Happe maps the ways in which the hereditarian body, one that is also normatively gendered and racialized, is the new site whereby economic injustice, environmental pollution, racism, and sexism are implicitly reinterpreted as pathologies of genes and by extension, the bodies they inhabit. Comparing genomic approaches to medicine and public health with discourses of epidemiology, social movements, and humanistic theories of the body and society, The Material Gene reworks our common assumption of what might count as effective, just, and socially transformative notions of health and disease.
Download or read book Who We Are and How We Got Here written by David Reich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past few years have seen a revolution in our ability to map whole genome DNA from ancient humans. With the ancient DNA revolution, combined with rapid genome mapping of present human populations, has come remarkable insights into our past. This important new data has clarified and added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up some remarkable surprises. The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations existing today are mixes of ancient ones, as well as in many cases carrying a genetic component from Neanderthals, and, in some populations, Denisovans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what the genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising ancestry. Gone are old ideas of any kind of racial 'purity', or even deep and ancient divides between peoples. Instead, we are finding a rich variety of mixtures. Reich describes the cutting-edge findings from the past few years, and also considers the sensitivities involved in tracing ancestry, with science sometimes jostling with politics and tradition. He brings an important wider message: that we should celebrate our rich diversity, and recognize that every one of us is the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of ancient peoples, which we carry as ghosts in our DNA. What will we discover next?
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 The Genome Generation written by Elizabeth Finkel and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2001 marked more than just the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey, it marked the beginning of the genome era. That was the year scientists first read the 3 billion letters of DNA that make up the human genome. This was followed by a veritable Noah's Ark of genomesandmdash;sponges and worms, dogs and cows, rice and wheat, chimps and elephantsandmdash;180 creatures aboard so far. So what have we learned from all this? How has it changed the way we practise medicine, grow crops and breed livestock? What have we learned about evolution? These are the questions science writer and molecular biologist Elizabeth Finkel asked herself four years ago. To find the answers she travelled the science frontier from Botswana to Boston, from Warracknabeal to Mexico and tracked down scientists working in the field. Their stories, told here, paint the picture of what it means to be part of the genome generation. 'The Genome Generation is absolutely riveting. These tales from the frontier are a 'must read' for everyone who wishes to understand our pastandmdash;the logic of evolutionandmdash;or take a peep into our exciting future at the creation of 'super plants' through 'digital agriculture'.'andmdash;R.A. Mashelkar, CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow and India President, Global Research Alliance
Download or read book Fueling Innovation and Discovery written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mathematical sciences are part of everyday life. Modern communication, transportation, science, engineering, technology, medicine, manufacturing, security, and finance all depend on the mathematical sciences. Fueling Innovation and Discovery describes recent advances in the mathematical sciences and advances enabled by mathematical sciences research. It is geared toward general readers who would like to know more about ongoing advances in the mathematical sciences and how these advances are changing our understanding of the world, creating new technologies, and transforming industries. Although the mathematical sciences are pervasive, they are often invoked without an explicit awareness of their presence. Prepared as part of the study on the Mathematical Sciences in 2025, a broad assessment of the current state of the mathematical sciences in the United States, Fueling Innovation and Discovery presents mathematical sciences advances in an engaging way. The report describes the contributions that mathematical sciences research has made to advance our understanding of the universe and the human genome. It also explores how the mathematical sciences are contributing to healthcare and national security, and the importance of mathematical knowledge and training to a range of industries, such as information technology and entertainment. Fueling Innovation and Discovery will be of use to policy makers, researchers, business leaders, students, and others interested in learning more about the deep connections between the mathematical sciences and every other aspect of the modern world. To function well in a technologically advanced society, every educated person should be familiar with multiple aspects of the mathematical sciences.
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 Cracking the Genome written by Kevin Davies and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2002-10 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This newly updated edition sheds light on the secrets of the sequence, highlighting the myriad ways in which genomics will impact human health for generations to come.
Download or read book Sequence Evolution Function written by Eugene V. Koonin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sequence - Evolution - Function is an introduction to the computational approaches that play a critical role in the emerging new branch of biology known as functional genomics. The book provides the reader with an understanding of the principles and approaches of functional genomics and of the potential and limitations of computational and experimental approaches to genome analysis. Sequence - Evolution - Function should help bridge the "digital divide" between biologists and computer scientists, allowing biologists to better grasp the peculiarities of the emerging field of Genome Biology and to learn how to benefit from the enormous amount of sequence data available in the public databases. The book is non-technical with respect to the computer methods for genome analysis and discusses these methods from the user's viewpoint, without addressing mathematical and algorithmic details. Prior practical familiarity with the basic methods for sequence analysis is a major advantage, but a reader without such experience will be able to use the book as an introduction to these methods. This book is perfect for introductory level courses in computational methods for comparative and functional genomics.
Download or read book The 1 000 Genome written by Kevin Davies and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this essential guide to the brave new future, Dr. Kevin Davies, author of Cracking the Genome, reveals the masterful ingenuity that transformed the process of decoding DNA and vividly brings the extraordinary drama of the grand scientific achievement to life. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signaled the completion of the Human Genome Project at a cost in excess of $2 billion. A decade later, the price for any of us to order our own personal genome sequence—a comprehensive map of the 3 billion letters in our DNA—had already dropped to just $1,000. Dozens of men and women—scientists, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and patients—have already been sequenced, pioneering a bold new era of personalized genomic medicine. The $1,000 genome has long been considered the tipping point that would open the floodgates to this revolution. How has this astonishing achievement been accomplished? To research the story of this unfolding revolution, critically acclaimed science writer Kevin Davies traveled to the leading centers and interviewed the entrepreneurs and pioneers in the race to achieve the $1,000 genome. Davies also profiles the future of genomic medicine and thoughtfully explores the many pressing issues raised by the tidal wave of personal genetic information.
Download or read book Human Genome Editing written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-08-13 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genome editing is a powerful new tool for making precise alterations to an organism's genetic material. Recent scientific advances have made genome editing more efficient, precise, and flexible than ever before. These advances have spurred an explosion of interest from around the globe in the possible ways in which genome editing can improve human health. The speed at which these technologies are being developed and applied has led many policymakers and stakeholders to express concern about whether appropriate systems are in place to govern these technologies and how and when the public should be engaged in these decisions. Human Genome Editing considers important questions about the human application of genome editing including: balancing potential benefits with unintended risks, governing the use of genome editing, incorporating societal values into clinical applications and policy decisions, and respecting the inevitable differences across nations and cultures that will shape how and whether to use these new technologies. This report proposes criteria for heritable germline editing, provides conclusions on the crucial need for public education and engagement, and presents 7 general principles for the governance of human genome editing.
Download or read book The Code Breaker written by Walter Isaacson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a “compelling” (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is an “enthralling detective story” (Oprah Daily) that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
Download or read book Curiosity Guides The Human Genome written by John Quackenbush and published by Charlesbridge. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The DNA sequence that comprises the human genome--the genetic blueprint found in each of our cells--is undoubtedly the greatest code ever to be broken. Completed at the dawn of a new millennium, the feat electrified both the scientific community and the general public with its tantalizing promise of new and better treatments for countless diseases, including Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson's. Yet what is arguably the most important discovery of our time has also opened a Pandora's box of questions about who we are as humans and how the unique information stored in our genomes can and might be used, making it all the more important for everyone to understand the new science of genomics. In the CURIOSITY GUIDE TO THE HUMAN GENOME, Dr. John Quackenbush, a renowned scientist and professor, conducts a fascinating tour of the history and science behind the Human Genome Project and the technologies that are revolutionizing the practice of medicine today. With a clear and engaging narrative style, he demystifies the fundamental principles of genetics and molecular biology, including the astounding ways in which genes function, alone or together with other genes and the environment, to either sustain life or trigger disease. In addition, Dr. Quackenbush goes beyond medicine to examine how DNA-sequencing technology is changing how we think of ourselves as a species by providing new insights about our earliest ancestors and reconfirming our inextricable link to all life on earth. Finally, he explores the legal and ethical questions surrounding such controversial topics as stem cell research, prenatal testing, forensics, and cloning, making this volume of the Curiosity Guides series an indispensable resource for navigating our brave new genomic world.
Download or read book The Genome Odyssey written by Dr. Euan Angus Ashley and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent, predict, and beat disease. Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, the price of genome sequencing has dropped at a staggering rate. It’s as if the price of a Ferrari went from $350,000 to a mere forty cents. Through breakthroughs made by Dr. Ashley’s team at Stanford and other dedicated groups around the world, analyzing the human genome has decreased from a heroic multibillion dollar effort to a single clinical test costing less than $1,000. For the first time we have within our grasp the ability to predict our genetic future, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins, and to decode what it really means to be human. In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Ashley details the medicine behind genome sequencing with clarity and accessibility. More than that, with passion for his subject and compassion for his patients, he introduces readers to the dynamic group of researchers and doctor detectives who hunt for answers, and to the pioneering patients who open up their lives to the medical community during their search for diagnoses and cures. He describes how he led the team that was the first to analyze and interpret a complete human genome, how they broke genome speed records to diagnose and treat a newborn baby girl whose heart stopped five times on the first day of her life, and how they found a boy with tumors growing inside his heart and traced the cause to a missing piece of his genome. These patients inspire Dr. Ashley and his team as they work to expand the boundaries of our medical capabilities and to envision a future where genome sequencing is available for all, where medicine can be tailored to treat specific diseases and to decode pathogens like viruses at the genomic level, and where our medical system as we know it has been completely revolutionized.
Download or read book History of Human Genetics written by Heike I. Petermann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-10 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by 30 authors from all over the world, this book provides a unique overview of exciting discoveries and surprising developments in human genetics over the last 50 years. The individual contributions, based on seven international workshops on the history of human genetics, cover a diverse range of topics, including the early years of the discipline, gene mapping and diagnostics. Further, they discuss the status quo of human genetics in different countries and highlight the value of genetic counseling as an important subfield of medical genetics.
Download or read book The Society of Genes written by Itai Yanai and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-11 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly four decades ago Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene, famously reducing humans to “survival machines” whose sole purpose was to preserve “the selfish molecules known as genes.” How these selfish genes work together to construct the organism, however, remained a mystery. Standing atop a wealth of new research, The Society of Genes now provides a vision of how genes cooperate and compete in the struggle for life. Pioneers in the nascent field of systems biology, Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher present a compelling new framework to understand how the human genome evolved and why understanding the interactions among our genes shifts the basic paradigm of modern biology. Contrary to what Dawkins’s popular metaphor seems to imply, the genome is not made of individual genes that focus solely on their own survival. Instead, our genomes comprise a society of genes which, like human societies, is composed of members that form alliances and rivalries. In language accessible to lay readers, The Society of Genes uncovers genetic strategies of cooperation and competition at biological scales ranging from individual cells to entire species. It captures the way the genome works in cancer cells and Neanderthals, in sexual reproduction and the origin of life, always underscoring one critical point: that only by putting the interactions among genes at center stage can we appreciate the logic of life.
Download or read book Review of the Department of Energy s Genomics GTL Program written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2006-04-19 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) promotes scientific and technological innovation to advance the national, economic, and energy security of the United States. Recognizing the potential of microorganisms to offer new energy alternatives and remediate environmental contamination, DOE initiated the Genomes to Life program, now called Genomics: GTL, in 2000. The program aims to develop a predictive understanding of microbial systems that can be used to engineer systems for bioenergy production and environmental remediation, and to understand carbon cycling and sequestration. This report provides an evaluation of the program and its infrastructure plan. Overall, the report finds that GTL's research has resulted in and promises to deliver many more scientific advancements that contribute to the achievement of DOE's goals. However, the DOE's current plan for building four independent facilities for protein production, molecular imaging, proteome analysis, and systems biology sequentially may not be the most cost-effective, efficient, and scientifically optimal way to provide this infrastructure. As an alternative, the report suggests constructing up to four institute-like facilities, each of which integrates the capabilities of all four of the originally planned facility types and focuses on one or two of DOE's mission goals. The alternative infrastructure plan could have an especially high ratio of scientific benefit to cost because the need for technology will be directly tied to the biology goals of the program.
