Genome (book)
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Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
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| Author | Matt Ridley |
|---|---|
| Subject | Human genome; Human genetics |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
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Publication date
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1999 |
| Pages | 344 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 165195856 |
| 599.935 | |
| LC Class | QH431 .R475 |
Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters is a 1999 popular science book by Matt Ridley, published by Fourth Estate.
The book devotes one chapter to each pair of human chromosomes. Since one (unnumbered) chapter is required to discuss the sex chromosomes, the final chapter is number 22. Ridley was inspired to adopt this model by Primo Levi's book The Periodic Table.
The first chapter begins with a quote from Alexander Pope on the cycle of life. The very broad topic "Life" is also the topic of the chapter. Ridley discusses the history of the gene briefly, including our "last universal common ancestor" or "LUCA".
Ridley discusses the history of human kind as a genetically distinct species. He compares the human genome to chimpanzees, and ancestral primates. He also points out that until the 19th Century, most scholars believed that there were 24 sets of genes, not 23 as known today.
This chapter discusses the interplay between early geneticists, including Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin, Hermann Joseph Muller and Francis Crick among others.
Huntington's Corea is used to discuss the use of a particular sequence on Chromosome Four to cause traumatic health consequences. The search for the chromosomal source of this and other related diseases is discussed through the work of Nancy Wexler, someone who may have inherited the gene but who turns to scientific work to study it in others.
The concepts of pleitropy and genetic pluralism are introduced. A brief history of the study of asthma is used as the case study. Asthma is related to as many as fifteen different genes, many on chromosome five. Specifically, this includes a change from adenosine (A) to guanine (G) at position 46 on the ADRB2 gene. The ADRB2 gene is related to the control of bronchodialation and bronchoconstriction.
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