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Jacob's Ladder: The
History of the Human Genome Henry Gee
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Jacob's Ladder delivers a remarkably
lucid explanation of what the sequencing of the human genome really tells us.
Knowing the sequence, evolutionary biologist Henry Gee shows, is just the beginning:
seeing the letters and words. The next frontier is in understanding snatches
of conversation between genes - how they interact to direct the growth of an
organism. Gee takes us into the heart of that conversation, illuminating how
genes govern a single egg cell's miraculous transformation into a human
being, and how they continue to direct that person's day-by-day development
throughout a lifetime. Gee tells the story of
what we know about the genome today and what we are likely to discover tomorrow.
As our knowledge advances, we will be able to direct with increasing
authority the conversations between genes - not only performing medical
interventions but also creating whole scripts directing birth, ancestry, and
diversity in a brave new world. Henry Gee, former Regent
professor at UCLA, is a science writer for Nature. He lives in |
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