Genome

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating, Thought-Provoking Read
Review: One of the best things about being in a book club is that as a member, you read books that you would not have chosen on your own. Genome by Matt Ridley, the second selection of the Dallas/Lakewood Book Club, is a perfect example. Genome is a book about science - it is about DNA and genes, and their effects on human development, health, behavior, and evolution. Many of us were worried that the material would be too technical, too complex - or just too boring.

But we need not have worried, because Matt Ridley did a great job of making a very complex subject accessible. His style was generally well accepted - not too technical, but technical enough to convince the layperson that true science lay behind the conclusions he draws. There were times when he digressed into unnecessary detail, and some of our Club members got mired - but overall he provided sufficient information to let the layperson understand how DNA and genes work and affect all humans, and he did it in an interesting way. Several members were put off by Ridley's frequent, rather patronizing admonitions to not view genes as causes of diseases, and at times found his opinions self-contradicting. He also did not always make note when he was writing his own opinion, as opposed to stating fact, which was at times misleading.

That said, most of our members thoroughly enjoyed the book because of the incredibly thought-provoking implications of Ridley's material. Ridley does not specifically weigh in on the Big Question - whether humans became what they are because of a divine force, or whether we are purely the result of millions of years of mutations and random selection. But the book does provide enough material to generate lively debate on questions of evolution, the proper role of scientific inquiry, and even spirituality. Some members felt Genome's explanations of DNA and chromosomes (or lack thereof) provided a basis to confirm God's hand in the design of people; others felt that the random, mutative nature of genes and the long stretches of 'useless' genetic filler sequences plainly bespeak Darwin's simple descent of man from more primitive species. Ridley does make a strong case that whether or not there are divine forces involved, nature and nurture both play critical roles in making each person unique, and in making humans different from other species. While DNA and genes do "program" humans to behave and develop in certain ways, outside environmental influences play just as important a role.

Overall, our Club recommends Genome; it is a book well worth reading, and a good introduction to the myriad topics and implications of the science of genetics. As befits any good overview, Genome provides an index and extensive bibliography for further reading. We give it 4 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Genome is a great read
Review: I am not a big fan of science. I was never inspired by the subject, too many long and confusing names. Instead I fancy myself a writer, and reading is more my passion. With this brief background out of the way, I must say that book -Genome by Matt Ridley is very good read.
Everyday the public hears about advances in the field of science such as cloning, mapping human DNA sequences, and genetic engineering. To many people, these misunderstood concepts instill fear and paranoia. We fear what we do not understand, and with this in mind, Mr. Ridley sets out to explain to people like me what is happening in language that we can understand.
The book itself is split up into 23 chapters, one for every chromosome of our genome. Then he focuses on one gene from the chapter's chromosome and looks into its role in the development of our species. Recognizing the difficulty of attracting a reading base of people who gave up on understanding science years ago, Ridley gives each chapter an eye catching name such as Sex, Intelligence, and Immortality. He then embarks on a colorful and intriguing journey through the human genome that leaves us wanting more. But wait that is only the beginning. Ridley refrains from boring us with a textbook writing style (the hip bones connected the thigh bone, the tight bones connected to the foot bone) and instead chooses to keep us awake by describing each chromosome with a captivating story related to that chromosomes' purpose. In covering such a massive subject, Ridley provides just enough specific storytelling to keep us focused. These concise narratives on subject such as asthma (Chapter 5) or Prader-Willi syndrome (Chapter 15) are very nice, because aside from the fact that they educated you, they can make you sound very smart at a party. Did you know that 97% of our genome is "genetic junk," and not useful to us at all, or that "we are, to a ninety-eight per approximation, chimpanzees" (Chapter 2)
But the most attractive feature of this book is the energy "mock my zeal if you wish" (Chapter 1) with which Ridley puts into his writing. To get people excited about something, you have to be excited yourself. This book brims from page 1 to 313 with passion and enthusiasm, and the reader is swept away in torrents of thrilling possibilities and provocative argument, after which we are left begging for more.
So there you have it, Genome by Matt Ridley, an entertaining and understandable look at the exciting progress and the promising future for the study, exploration, and eventual mastering of the recipe of life, the genome. But all of the excitement should be calmed with a bit of a warning from the man himself: "the genome, great book that it is, may give us the bleakest kind of self-knowledge: the knowledge of our destiny, not the kind of knowledge that you can do something about." (Chapter 4)

Rating:
Summary: Good, but has some non-fact facts. Flawed.
Review: I got this thinking I'd get a nice airplane read out of it, maybe learn something. I've got a bioscience background.

It's quite varied. I wish he had left out his entire discussion of human history for instance. The stuff about meat, metabolism and the brain in evolution, for instance, is rather ridiculous really, because there are so many millions of people who live their entire lives without meat. The factual arguments he gave for it are simply not true.

Made me wonder what else he got wrong, and although parts are quite interesting, I found myself losing interest because I saw stuff that was misleading or untrue.

Rating:
Summary: What a mess !
Review: I purchased this book for 2 reasons: 1.) I am a lay person interested in the human genome, 2.) Matt Ridley wrote an incomparable book called Red Queen, his treatment of sex and evolution. I was hoping for a similar treatment on the topic of the genome. What a disappointment!

The first problem was the identification of the chapters with the 23 chromosomes. That limited him to about one gene per chromosome with which to illustrate the topic of the chapter. Unfortunately not all the genes for learning, development and so on, are on the same chromosome. So in a book about science the actual science was almost totally absent. He then used old and current history/gossip to fill in the rest of the chapter. All the chapters were like this so there was no real common unifying argument running through the book. There was no focus ! In one chapter he digresses for around 10 pages on the eugenics movement. While that certainly is a valid topic for a science book of some sort, it does not have anything to do with the actual discoveries of the human genome.

The old history and current efforts were heavily laden with what I can only call insular British snobbery of the worst sort. In the Red Queen he actually presented opposing views and then presented a collegial set of arguments to show why he disagreed. In this work he seems to have done away with the presentation of ideas, and simply reduces other ideas he disagrees with to a few lines he then sneers at. Science reporting by scorn. He sneers at global warming, but doesn't say why, he sneers at the language studies conducted with monkeys -- and then turns around in a chapter and extols animal learning. The only sneer he does expand on, is his contempt for the British government's efforts to ban British beef due to mad cow disease (yes this too is part of a book on the human genome).

He seemed at particular pains to savage Americans, and to paint himself as a Briton living in England. He described one millionaire in the bio game as a 'high school drop out, former professional surfer, and Vietnam veteran' ? Now if his point is this person lacks an academic background then he is correct, but that is not stated -- the implication is that this person is worthless simply due to his unorthodox background. The tone of the whole book leads me to believe this book is in fact aimed at Ridley's British colleagues. He hopes to prove to them that though he has journeyed in the land of the barbarian (USA) he in fact has not been corrupted. That is the only way I can make sense of the tone of the book and the totally bizarre inclusion of Alexander the Great as a way to describe the ancient Egyptian god Ammon.

His forays into other areas could be a wonderful addition and support to a heavily science laden tome -- but these forays are almost all there is. He then wanders off topic to preach on items that he supports or that he is against. When he does not stray from the topic he tends to talk down and lecture his audience. He is against the use of presenting diseases as the means to explain a gene -- but then he repeatedly does this himself. He seems to miss the point that disease often helps to point out what went wrong and how. He forgets that his audience is unlikely to be sensation seekers, so he feels the need to periodically admonish us in what looks like 22 point type that genes aren't there to cause disease.

Finally this odd, confused book simply ends. He reaches the end of his 23rd chapter and simply stops. No summary, no wrap-up, no hopes or ideas for the future. The impression given is that someone just turned off the power, or that he completed the required number of words and that was all the time he wished to spend on the book.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Readable Introduction
Review: A brilliant and eminently readable introduction this book explains the concept of the human genome. Ridley does a remarkable job of introducing you to how genes work, what their interactions seem to be, and the relationship between heredity and free choice. He makes a compelling case that in the end our genetic code contains limits (humans can not fly on their own) and probabilities (how likely we are to get breast cancer or Alzheimer's) but there are so many specific individual choices that no two twins are identical. If identical twins with identical genetic inheritances interact with their environment and their life experiences to become two substantially different people then imagine the range of differences between all of us.

There are so many thought-provoking sections of this book that it is hard to single out any one item. Let me just note that the chapter which discusses mad cow disease and its human analogue, the laughing disease of New Guinea which was a major cause of death among the Fore Tribe. Ridley's explanation of the role prisons play in causing these diseases is lucid and yet the science behind it is daunting.

For those who care about science education Ridley's approach to the mystery of knowledge explains a great deal about why the fact and memory based modern American approach to teaching science drives children away from the field. Consider just this passage: "The theme of this chapter is mystery. A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him -- the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed. The forest is more interesting than the clearing." We need a science education based on learning about the unknown rather than memorizing the known. Ridley explains these principles again and again throughout the book.

If you care about the most important scientific revolution of the last twenty years this book is a very good starting point.

Rating:
Summary: Very educational
Review: I'm currently a 9th grade student and find the DNA, RNA, etc. reviews extremely fascinating. I picked up this book and found it a wonderful read. You should try it if you would like to learn many news things in the molecular biology world.

Rating:
Summary: Ain't nothin' like the real thing
Review: Until now human genes have been almost a complete mystery. However, because of the human genome project we will be the first humans to penetrate that mystery, which will in turn give us great new answers along with even greater new questions. We will be the first generation since "the beginning" - 4 billion years ago (?) - to read this book that is the genome, a book which will tell us more about our origins, our evolution, our nature and our minds than all the other efforts of science to date.

We've now discovered that the complete set of human genes (the human genome) can be found in our chromosomes, 23 separate pairs of them. Of the 100 trillion cells in the body each has a set of chromosomes making up a genome pair or set, one from mom and one from dad. These genes, an arbitrary collection of genes on the chromosomes inside the cell nuclei, are each composed of DNA which hold the information (the recipes for life) to create proteins which will determine how we as an organism look, behave, fight infection, metabolize food, and do virtually everything else.

This book relates the story of the human genome by using a gene from each chromosome to chronicle the story of our lives. By constructing the book in this manner the author represents the basic themes of human nature thru genetics. Thus, the genome is an autobiography of our species, recording the most important events in our history as they've occurred.

There are probably 60,000-80,000 genes in our human genome of which the great majority are merely tedious biochemical middle managers. All of these genes have not been found, but their story continues to unfold almost daily.

Each chromosome includes several thousand stories called genes. Each gene has paragraphs (exons), advertisements (introns), words (codons) and letters (bases). Genomes are like a book, but they don't all read just left to right, they sometimes read both ways.

While books are written in words of varying lengths genomes are written in 3 letter words which always use the same 4 letters. These letters are written in long chains of sugar and phosphate called DNA molecules to which the letters (called bases) are attached.

Each chromosome is one pair of very long DNA molecules. Through a process of the DNA being transmitted by RNA to produce proteins, which have themselves been formed by amino acids, we begin to see how the proteins switch genes on and off. When genes are replicated mistakes are sometimes made, usually referred to as mutations. Human beings accumulate about 100 mutations per generation and if they occur in the wrong place they can be fatal. This is an oversimplification and there are many exceptions to these rules, so you'll just have to read the book for the details. Believe me it's worth it!

For each of the 23 chromosomes Ridley explores the following human instincts, traits and abilities: ...life, species, history, fate, environment, intelligence, instinct, conflict, self-interest, disease, stress, personality, self-assembly, pre-history, immortality, sex, memory, death, cures, prevention, politics, eugenics and free will. Within these discussions you'll find more cocktail party ammunition than you'll ever need to know. Plus, it will open up a whole new world of understanding of "the whys and wherefores" of human nature.

The study of the genome compares with, though greatly exceeds, one of the greatest technological advancements in human history, one which took us from the age of faith to the age of reason: the microscope. Why, you might ask? Because it allowed man to come to grips with and understand the germ theory of disease. The notion that one contracted illness from some sort of heresy was pushed aside by the scientifically induced realism that illness is caused by microbes, bad ones, that endangered the health of the human body; sometimes fatally. This helped to change the balance of political power just as surely as the crossbow, the stirrup or the trireme. Suffice it to say it was a "big deal".

Matt Ridley has written a terrific book within which he avers that we, today, are living through the greatest intellectual moment in the history of man. Indeed, he has done us all a service by reducing this complex subject, one with a mind numbing array of details, to an understandable, easy to grasp format. It will leave the more intellectually inclined of us gasping for more. Don't miss it!

Rating:
Summary: A far more interesting book than I expected
Review: Genetics is one of the spookiest sciences of the modern era. On the one hand, parts of it are (at our current level of technology) quite simple: we can already find many genes that result directly in specific diseases. We can match DNA fingerprints with a high degree of accuracy. We can even insert genes into foreign organisms and predict with a fair degree of confidence what to expect. On the other hand, there are still plenty of things we don't understand, even after we think we do. Prions (the twisted proteins that cause mad cow disease and related syndromes) don't even seem to be alive, and thus can't be killed, but they can cause diseases nonetheless. Although at first I thought this would be a fairly mundane tour of the human genome ("this is the eye color allelle, this one's for hair color"), Ridley doesn't use his chosen structure to constrain the ideas but rather as a jumping-off point to explore what he wants to talk about. In this sense the idea of having a chapter for each chromosome is a gimmick (he could have written much the same book -- an excellent layman's tour of genetics past, present, and future -- without it), but the strength of the material makes its organization more or less irrelevant. The book touches on literally every aspect of modern genetics and evolutionary theory, from language to the battle against cancer to genetic engineering to cloning to eugenics. One could criticize the book for not delving particularly deeply into any of these topics, but the wonderful thing is that there is so much happening in this field today that even a survey like this one will expose you to dozens of new and provocative new ideas. One refreshing note is that Ridley doesn't raise a hue and cry over ethical issues and potential risks of new genetic technology; his assessment of these issues is quite possibly the clearest thinking on the subject I've read in a popular publication. Highly recommended -- thought-provoking and enjoyable! Read it now, because the field is evolving (pun intended) so rapidly that this book may well be obsolete within two years.

Rating:
Summary: fun to read
Review: this was a great book to read because it is a compilation of vignettes. it's easy to read one or two in a sitting and then let it rest for a day, a week or a month. i wouldn't say that this book was a favorite of mine, but i'm glad i read it.

Rating:
Summary: a good book on THE topic
Review: "Evolution is the thing and Darwin is the man."

This is the sentence my college English professor emailed to me several years ago. And right he was. Today, scientists are prying deep into our genetic vaults, finding clues to our past that Matt Ridley claims are leaving the scientists breathless. Prions, junk DNA, parasites in our genome, and little genetic ins and outs tell the tale of how homo sapiens left company with other Earthly organisms millions of years ago. We thought we were advanced when we split the atom, broke the speed of sound, and landed on the moon. We were not even started then: now, we have mapped our own genome onto a computer disc.

Matt Ridley is well educated, and he has done his gruntwork as a writer for the Economist, making his explanatory skills superb. He tells the tale of a "briefly abundant, relatively hairless primate out of Africa" with wit and skill, aligning his book along twenty-three chapters (like our chromosomes). There is fine explanation about how DNA works, what parts of this complicated "filament" do what, and how male genes "invade" a woman's body and build a placenta. In between this fascinating material are quotes from Alexander Pope and Francis Crick, among others. Ridley also explains the "homeobox" genes, the ones that "tell" other genes where to go during the building of an embryo. We share these development genes with flies and mice, causing Ridley to remark that "at the level of the embryo, we are glorified flies." Ahh, human vanity...

For anyone with a casual or serious interest in what one reviewer called "the most portentous natural truth that science has yet discovered," Matt Ridley's Genome is a great read. His prose is clear and his sense of humor peppers this most deep, beautiful, and disturbing of all human subjects: our very selves.