The Genes That Make Us

Author : Edwin Kirk
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781925849394
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Genes That Make Us written by Edwin Kirk and published by . This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genes - we all have them and we're all affected by them, often in unknown ways. Whether directly inherited or modified by our environment, genes control or significantly influence almost every aspect of our lives, from the success of our conception and the development of our sexual characteristics, to the colour of our skin, hair, and eyes; our height and weight; our health; and, unfortunately, an untold number of diseases. For many, the first time that genetics truly matters to them is in a doctor's office as they learn about a condition that may affect them, their unborn children, or even their wider family. Yet from the first laborious survey of the human genome twenty years ago to the commercial machines that now sequence 6,000 genomes per year, a revolution is taking place in medicine. Navigating this world of heartbreaking uncertainties, tantalising possibilities, and thorny questions of morality is Professor Edwin Kirk, a rare doctor who works both in the lab and with patients, and who has over two decades of experience. In The Genes That Make Us, he explains everything you need to know with clarity, insight, and great humanity.

Author : Genetic Alliance
Publisher : Lulu.com
ISBN 13 : 0982162219
Total Pages : 104 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Understanding Genetics written by Genetic Alliance and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this manual is to provide an educational genetics resource for individuals, families, and health professionals in the New York - Mid-Atlantic region and increase awareness of specialty care in genetics. The manual begins with a basic introduction to genetics concepts, followed by a description of the different types and applications of genetic tests. It also provides information about diagnosis of genetic disease, family history, newborn screening, and genetic counseling. Resources are included to assist in patient care, patient and professional education, and identification of specialty genetics services within the New York - Mid-Atlantic region. At the end of each section, a list of references is provided for additional information. Appendices can be copied for reference and offered to patients. These take-home resources are critical to helping both providers and patients understand some of the basic concepts and applications of genetics and genomics.

Author : Robert Plomin
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262357763
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Blueprint, with a new afterword written by Robert Plomin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A top behavioral geneticist makes the case that DNA inherited from our parents at the moment of conception can predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses. In Blueprint, behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin describes how the DNA revolution has made DNA personal by giving us the power to predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses from birth. A century of genetic research shows that DNA differences inherited from our parents are the consistent lifelong sources of our psychological individuality—the blueprint that makes us who we are. Plomin reports that genetics explains more about the psychological differences among people than all other factors combined. Nature, not nurture, is what makes us who we are. Plomin explores the implications of these findings, drawing some provocative conclusions—among them that parenting styles don't really affect children's outcomes once genetics is taken into effect. This book offers readers a unique insider's view of the exciting synergies that came from combining genetics and psychology. The paperback edition has a new afterword by the author.

Author : National Research Council
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309038405
Total Pages : 128 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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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.

Author : Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476733538
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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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).

Author : Jeremy Taylor
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191613584
Total Pages : 395 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Not a Chimp written by Jeremy Taylor and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-05-27 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans are primates, and our closest relatives are the other African apes - chimpanzees closest of all. With the mapping of the human genome, and that of the chimp, a direct comparison of the differences between the two, letter by letter along the billions of As, Gs, Cs, and Ts of the DNA code, has led to the widely vaunted claim that we differ from chimps by a mere 1.6% of our genetic code. A mere hair's breadth genetically! To a rather older tradition of anthropomorphizing chimps, trying to get them to speak, dressing them up for 'tea parties', was added the stamp of genetic confirmation. It also began an international race to find that handful of genes that make up the difference - the genes that make us uniquely human. But what does that 1.6% really mean? And should it really lead us to consider extending limited human rights to chimps, as some have suggested? Are we, after all, just chimps with a few genetic tweaks? Is our language and our technology just an extension of the grunts and ant-collecting sticks of chimps? In this book, Jeremy Taylor sketches the picture that is emerging from cutting edge research in genetics, animal behaviour, and other fields. The indications are that the so-called 1.6% is much larger and leads to profound differences between the two species. We shared a common ancestor with chimps some 6-7 million years ago, but we humans have been racing away ever since. One in ten of our genes, says Taylor, has undergone evolution in the past 40,000 years! Some of the changes that happened since we split from chimpanzees are to genes that control the way whole orchestras of other genes are switched on and off, and where. Taylor shows, using studies of certain genes now associated with speech and with brain development and activity, that the story looks to be much more complicated than we first thought. This rapidly changing and exciting field has recently discovered a host of genetic mechanisms that make us different from other apes. As Taylor points out, for too long we have let our sentimentality for chimps get in the way of our understanding. Chimps use tools, but so do crows. Certainly chimps are our closest genetic relatives. But relatively small differences in genetic code can lead to profound differences in cognition and behaviour. Our abilities give us the responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world, including endangered primates. But for the purposes of human society and human concepts such as rights, let's not pretend that chimps are humans uneducated and undressed. We've changed a lot in those 12 million years.

Author : Jon Beckwith
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674020677
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making Genes, Making Waves written by Jon Beckwith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1969, Jon Beckwith and his colleagues succeeded in isolating a gene from the chromosome of a living organism. Announcing this startling achievement at a press conference, Beckwith took the opportunity to issue a public warning about the dangers of genetic engineering. Jon Beckwith's book, the story of a scientific life on the front line, traces one remarkable man's dual commitment to scientific research and social responsibility over the course of a career spanning most of the postwar history of genetics and molecular biology. A thoroughly engrossing memoir that recounts Beckwith's halting steps toward scientific triumphs--among them, the discovery of the genetic element that turns genes on--as well as his emergence as a world-class political activist, Making Genes, Making Waves is also a compelling history of the major controversies in genetics over the last thirty years. Presenting the science in easily understandable terms, Beckwith describes the dramatic changes that transformed biology between the late 1950s and our day, the growth of the radical science movement in the 1970s, and the personalities involved throughout. He brings to light the differing styles of scientists as well as the different ways in which science is presented within the scientific community and to the public at large. Ranging from the travails of Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project and recent "Science Wars," Beckwith's book provides a sweeping view of science and its social context in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Author : Dan Agin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199745803
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book More Than Genes written by Dan Agin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-02 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are all shaped by our genetic inheritance and by the environment we live in. Indeed, the argument about which of these two forces, nature or nurture, predominates has been raging for decades. But what about our very first environment--the prenatal world where we exist for nine months between conception and birth and where we are more vulnerable than at any other point in our lives? In More Than Genes, Dan Agin marshals new scientific evidence to argue that the fetal environment can be just as crucial as genetic hard-wiring or even later environment in determining our intelligence and behavior. Stress during pregnancy, for example, puts women at far greater risk of bearing children prone to anxiety disorders. Nutritional deprivation during early fetal development may elevate the risk of late onset schizophrenia. And exposure to a whole host of environmental toxins--methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, pesticides, ionizing radiation, and most especially lead--as well as maternal use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or cocaine can have impacts ranging from mild cognitive impairment to ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders. Agin argues as well that differences in IQ among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups are far more attributable to higher levels of stress and chemical toxicity in inner cities--which seep into the prenatal environment and compromise the health of the fetus--than to genetic inheritance. The good news is that the prenatal environment is malleable, and Agin suggests that if we can abandon the naive idea of "immaculate gestation," we can begin to protect fetal development properly. Cogently argued, thoroughly researched, and accessibly written, More Than Genes challenges many long-held assumptions and represents a huge step forward in our understanding of the origins of human intelligence and behavior.

Author : Bill Sullivan
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 1426220561
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Pleased to Meet Me written by Bill Sullivan and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are you attracted to a certain "type?" Why are you a morning person? Why do you vote the way you do? From a witty new voice in popular science comes a clever, life-changing look at what makes you you. "I can't believe I just said that." "What possessed me to do that?" "What's wrong with me?" We're constantly seeking answers to these fundamental human questions, and now, science has the answers. The foods we enjoy, the people we love, the emotions we feel, and the beliefs we hold can all be traced back to our DNA, germs, and environment. This witty, colloquial book is popular science at its best, describing in everyday language how genetics, epigenetics, microbiology, and psychology work together to influence our personality and actions. Mixing cutting-edge research and relatable humor, Pleased to Meet Me is filled with fascinating insights that shine a light on who we really are--and how we might become our best selves.

Author : William R. Clark
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190292318
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Are We Hardwired? written by William R. Clark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Books such as Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene have aroused fierce controversy by arguing for the powerful influence of genes on human behavior. But are we entirely at the mercy of our chromosomes? In Are We Hardwired?, scientists William R. Clark and Michael Grunstein say the answer is both yes--and no. The power and fascination of Are We Hardwired? lie in their explanation of that deceptively simple answer. Using eye-opening examples of genetically identical twins who, though raised in different families, have had remarkably parallel lives, the authors show that indeed roughly half of human behavior can be accounted for by DNA. But the picture is quite complicated. Clark and Grunstein take us on a tour of modern genetics and behavioral science, revealing that few elements of behavior depend upon a single gene; complexes of genes, often across chromosomes, drive most of our heredity-based actions. To illustrate this point, they examine the genetic basis, and quirks, of individual behavioral traits--including aggression, sexuality, mental function, eating disorders, alcoholism, and drug abuse. They show that genes and environment are not opposing forces; heredity shapes how we interpret our surroundings, which in turn changes the very structure of our brain. Clearly we are not simply puppets of either influence. Perhaps most interesting, the book suggests that the source of our ability to choose, to act unexpectedly, may lie in the chaos principle: the most minute differences during activation of a single neuron may lead to utterly unpredictable actions. This masterful account of the nature-nurture controversy--at once provocative and informative--answers some of our oldest questions in unexpected new ways