boomerdell's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
seeker42's review against another edition
4.0
This book provides a wealth of information on genetics and is exceptionally detailed, for a lay audience. However, this great attention to detail proved to be its undoing for me, and I stopped reading after consuming 60% of the material. Although I am an avid science reader and have a scientific background in the physical sciences, I found it too highly specialized for anyone except those who are passionately interested in genetics. I have not given up on it, but have shelved it for the time being while I pursue other interests.
tawanghdyn's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Genocide and Racism
ikon_biotin_jungle_lumen's review against another edition
5.0
I rank this as one of the 10 most informative and thought-provoking books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It became apparent within the first chapter why Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a Pulitzer-winning author and scholar. As a biology-curious layman, I feel that this book was written for me. It at no point coddles the reader, but neither does it unduly baffle the reader with science. A near-perfect balance has been struck between readability and communication of wonderfully complex thought.
As a Christian and 6-day creationist, I was extremely curious to see Mukherjee's handling of the evolutionary development of the gene. As a whole, I must say that I was rather disappointed. I believe that much further elaboration was necessary for a work such as this. On the other hand, I must applaud Mukherjee for approaching the history of the gene as a scholar, who necessary cannot record observations about the inception of the unobservable. Multitudes of lesser scholars would stoop to portraying their own origin hypotheses as historical fact, rather than rightfully concluding that science cannot comprehend the unobservable.
Human genetics displays the masterful hand of God at work in the world's unfathomably complex and beautiful design. This statement following James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the double helix model leapt out—"The solution was so beautiful that it could not possibly be wrong." This beauty is something that cannot come to be by chance. In my mind, the unguided engine of macroevolution is an entirely unsatisfactory explanation for a structure such as DNA.
The issue of life and preservation was also well handled, but I came away with a somewhat bitter taste. The encounter with Ericka seemed to leave Mukherjee with an impression of what a wonderful person she was—and yet Mukherjee seems rather to wish that she had not been born. Surely many would wish that the same woman could be born free of genetic disease, but such suffering is often the crucible from which beautiful people are born. "If there is any doubt that genotypes can influence temperament or personality, then a single encounter with a Down child can lay that idea to rest."
I believe that the answer to such 'problems' as Downs children and other genetically aberrant people is not the termination of such in the womb. Until the nature of life is better understood, the systematic killing of aberrants is unacceptable. Humans are soul-bearing beings created in the image of God—cursed imperfections are our burden to bear, save for what remedies we may derive via God-granted ability and determined effort. We are not fetuses, objects, or extremities to be pruned. Man is no god to have such authority over his fellows.
As a Christian and 6-day creationist, I was extremely curious to see Mukherjee's handling of the evolutionary development of the gene. As a whole, I must say that I was rather disappointed. I believe that much further elaboration was necessary for a work such as this. On the other hand, I must applaud Mukherjee for approaching the history of the gene as a scholar, who necessary cannot record observations about the inception of the unobservable. Multitudes of lesser scholars would stoop to portraying their own origin hypotheses as historical fact, rather than rightfully concluding that science cannot comprehend the unobservable.
Human genetics displays the masterful hand of God at work in the world's unfathomably complex and beautiful design. This statement following James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the double helix model leapt out—"The solution was so beautiful that it could not possibly be wrong." This beauty is something that cannot come to be by chance. In my mind, the unguided engine of macroevolution is an entirely unsatisfactory explanation for a structure such as DNA.
The issue of life and preservation was also well handled, but I came away with a somewhat bitter taste. The encounter with Ericka seemed to leave Mukherjee with an impression of what a wonderful person she was—and yet Mukherjee seems rather to wish that she had not been born. Surely many would wish that the same woman could be born free of genetic disease, but such suffering is often the crucible from which beautiful people are born. "If there is any doubt that genotypes can influence temperament or personality, then a single encounter with a Down child can lay that idea to rest."
I believe that the answer to such 'problems' as Downs children and other genetically aberrant people is not the termination of such in the womb. Until the nature of life is better understood, the systematic killing of aberrants is unacceptable. Humans are soul-bearing beings created in the image of God—cursed imperfections are our burden to bear, save for what remedies we may derive via God-granted ability and determined effort. We are not fetuses, objects, or extremities to be pruned. Man is no god to have such authority over his fellows.
wanderaven's review against another edition
4.0
If you read Mukherjee's Pulitzer Prize winning Emperor of All Maladies, you may already have the sense that his compelling work can feel equally accessible and difficult with complexity.
And of course it is, because he's discussing cancer there, genes here. If anyone can make the technical aspects of these elements as explicit and as easy as they can possibly be to understand, it's Mukherjee. He does the best any science writer can do, in my reading experience.
And yet. And yet I found myself persevering sometimes. There were sections, in this 608 page journey, where I assured myself that I didn't need to absolutely and completely understand each lesson in order to consume the whole and to appreciate these bits in the larger context.
I was correct in this assessment. I'll still assign The Gene four stars over on goodreads, despite that I walk away from it feeling that if I'd just spent more time re-reading some bits, I might better have been able to visualize the structures of recombinant genes and to comprehend actions such as splicing genes.
Because Mukherjee does equally as well delving into the other aspects of the gene, including the history, morality and philosophy, current scientific and medical practices, and his own family history, my lack of fully understanding some of the technical aspects are easily overcome.
Some fascinating things I learned:
'Gene' was initially intended to be pronounced like 'Jen' as in 'proGENesis', from which the word originated, but it was immediately pronounced the way we do now.
"On a vast stretch of chromosome eleven, for instance, there is a causeway dedicated entirely to the sensation of smell. Here, a cluster of 155 closely related genes encodes a series of protein receptors that are professional smell receptors. Each receptor binds to a unique chemical structure, like a key to a lock, and generates a distinctive sensation of smell in the brain - spearmint, lemon, caraway, jasmine, vanilla, ginger, pepper. An elaborate form of gene regulation ensures that only one odor-receptor gene is chosen from this cluster and expressed in a single smell-sensing neuron in the nose, thereby enabling us to discriminate thousands of smells."
On twins, separated at birth, and reunited and then studied:
"Both laughed uncontrollably, erupting into peals of giggles with minimal provocation (the staff called them the 'giggle twins'). They played pranks on the staff, and on each other. Both were five feet, three inches tall, and both had crooked fingers. Both had gray-brown hair; both had died it an unusual shade of auburn. They tested identically on IQ tests. Both had fallen down the stairs as children and broken their ankles; both had a consequent fear of heights, and yet both, despite some clumsiness, had taken lessons in ballroom dancing. Both had met their future husbands through dancing lessons."
and
"A pair of twins had an identical manner of rubbing their noses, and - even though they had never met - had each invented a new word to describe the odd habit, squidging. Two sisters in Bouchard's study shared the same pattern of anxiety and despair. As teenagers, they confessed, they had been haunted by the same nightmare: of feeling suffocated with various - but typically metal - things: 'door-knobs, needles and fishhooks.'"
The incredibly precise and delicate operations initiated by genes - from distinguishing smells to much more crucial things such as hormonal and developmental actions - are alarming and almost fantastical. Things that can't seemingly possibly be explained by the actions of genes, such as the examples given above with the twins like falling down the stairs and breaking their ankles, or coming up with the same new word for the same action, and yet seem to somehow have a basis in heredity because of identical twins experiencing them, are freaky and so fascinating to read.
As with the Emperor, Mukherjee makes what could be an otherwise weighty and often difficult subject rather fascinating and explicable.
* The Gene: An Intimate History was released in the US on May 17, 2016. An advanced copy was provided to me by the publisher, Scribner (Simon and Schuster).
And of course it is, because he's discussing cancer there, genes here. If anyone can make the technical aspects of these elements as explicit and as easy as they can possibly be to understand, it's Mukherjee. He does the best any science writer can do, in my reading experience.
And yet. And yet I found myself persevering sometimes. There were sections, in this 608 page journey, where I assured myself that I didn't need to absolutely and completely understand each lesson in order to consume the whole and to appreciate these bits in the larger context.
I was correct in this assessment. I'll still assign The Gene four stars over on goodreads, despite that I walk away from it feeling that if I'd just spent more time re-reading some bits, I might better have been able to visualize the structures of recombinant genes and to comprehend actions such as splicing genes.
Because Mukherjee does equally as well delving into the other aspects of the gene, including the history, morality and philosophy, current scientific and medical practices, and his own family history, my lack of fully understanding some of the technical aspects are easily overcome.
Some fascinating things I learned:
'Gene' was initially intended to be pronounced like 'Jen' as in 'proGENesis', from which the word originated, but it was immediately pronounced the way we do now.
"On a vast stretch of chromosome eleven, for instance, there is a causeway dedicated entirely to the sensation of smell. Here, a cluster of 155 closely related genes encodes a series of protein receptors that are professional smell receptors. Each receptor binds to a unique chemical structure, like a key to a lock, and generates a distinctive sensation of smell in the brain - spearmint, lemon, caraway, jasmine, vanilla, ginger, pepper. An elaborate form of gene regulation ensures that only one odor-receptor gene is chosen from this cluster and expressed in a single smell-sensing neuron in the nose, thereby enabling us to discriminate thousands of smells."
On twins, separated at birth, and reunited and then studied:
"Both laughed uncontrollably, erupting into peals of giggles with minimal provocation (the staff called them the 'giggle twins'). They played pranks on the staff, and on each other. Both were five feet, three inches tall, and both had crooked fingers. Both had gray-brown hair; both had died it an unusual shade of auburn. They tested identically on IQ tests. Both had fallen down the stairs as children and broken their ankles; both had a consequent fear of heights, and yet both, despite some clumsiness, had taken lessons in ballroom dancing. Both had met their future husbands through dancing lessons."
and
"A pair of twins had an identical manner of rubbing their noses, and - even though they had never met - had each invented a new word to describe the odd habit, squidging. Two sisters in Bouchard's study shared the same pattern of anxiety and despair. As teenagers, they confessed, they had been haunted by the same nightmare: of feeling suffocated with various - but typically metal - things: 'door-knobs, needles and fishhooks.'"
The incredibly precise and delicate operations initiated by genes - from distinguishing smells to much more crucial things such as hormonal and developmental actions - are alarming and almost fantastical. Things that can't seemingly possibly be explained by the actions of genes, such as the examples given above with the twins like falling down the stairs and breaking their ankles, or coming up with the same new word for the same action, and yet seem to somehow have a basis in heredity because of identical twins experiencing them, are freaky and so fascinating to read.
As with the Emperor, Mukherjee makes what could be an otherwise weighty and often difficult subject rather fascinating and explicable.
* The Gene: An Intimate History was released in the US on May 17, 2016. An advanced copy was provided to me by the publisher, Scribner (Simon and Schuster).
nabilahs's review against another edition
5.0
'... genes were no longer just the subjects of study, but the instruments of study.
... recombination DNA had made the language of genetics recursive.'
Interesting take from The Gene; in short thinking in genes from the realm of science ➡️ realm of technology.
The Gene is a spectacular book about human genetics that fascinates me when the author explores cancers, mental illness, schizophrenia, AIDS, & autism & analyzes whether it is either genetic or sporadic.
My concern about family genetics on cancer is answered (kinda) through the extensive scientific history by Mukherjee.
There are 'controversial' takes on preliminary trials using mice and monkeys (experiment) to continue the gene technology which I love.
... recombination DNA had made the language of genetics recursive.'
Interesting take from The Gene; in short thinking in genes from the realm of science ➡️ realm of technology.
The Gene is a spectacular book about human genetics that fascinates me when the author explores cancers, mental illness, schizophrenia, AIDS, & autism & analyzes whether it is either genetic or sporadic.
My concern about family genetics on cancer is answered (kinda) through the extensive scientific history by Mukherjee.
There are 'controversial' takes on preliminary trials using mice and monkeys (experiment) to continue the gene technology which I love.
chuyita2000's review against another edition
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
5.0
Great explanations. Easy to follow. Connected history, science, psychology and philosophy.