Genome: The Autobiography of a Species In 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley

By Matt Ridley

The human genome, the full set of genes housed in twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, is not anything lower than an autobiography of our species. Spelled out in one thousand million three-letter phrases utilizing the four-letter alphabet of DNA, the genome has been edited, abridged, altered and additional to because it has been passed down, iteration to iteration, over greater than 3 billion years. With the 1st draft of the human genome as a result of be released in 2000, we, this fortunate new release, are the 1st beings who're capable of learn this amazing booklet and to achieve hitherto incredible insights into what it ability to be alive, to be human, to be awake or to be in poor health.
via deciding on one newly came across gene from all the twenty-three human chromosomes and telling its tale, Matt Ridley recounts the heritage of our species and its ancestors from the sunrise of existence to the threshold of destiny medication. He unearths genes that we percentage with micro organism, genes that distinguish us from chimpanzees, genes which could condemn us to merciless ailments, genes that can impression our intelligence, genes that let us to take advantage of grammatical language, genes that advisor the advance of bodies and our brains, genes that permit us to recollect, genes that express the unusual alchemy of nature and nurture, genes that parasitise us for his or her personal egocentric ends, genes that conflict with each other and genes that list the historical past of human migrations. From Huntington's illness to melanoma, he explores the functions of genetics: the hunt for figuring out and remedy, the horrors of eugenics and the philosophical implications for knowing the ambiguity of unfastened will.

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The Garrod theory lay neglected for thirty-five years and had to be rediscovered afresh. 1 We now know that the main purpose of genes is to store the recipe for making proteins. It is proteins that do almost every chemical, structural and regulatory thing that is done in the body: they generate energy, fight infection, digest food, form hair, carry oxygen and so on and on. Every single protein in the body is made from a gene by a translation of the genetic code. The same is not quite true in reverse: there are genes, which are never translated into protein, such as the ribosomal-RNA gene of chromosome 1, but even that is involved in making other proteins.

The other parent's essence seemed to have vanished. But it had not: Mendel allowed the hybrids to self-fertilise and the essence of the missing grandparent reappeared intact in roughly one-quarter of the cases. 98 to 1. It was, as Sir Ronald Fisher pointed out in the next century, too suspiciously close to a ratio of three. 2 Like a man possessed, Mendel turned from peas to fuschias, maize and other plants. He found the same results. He knew that he had discovered something profound about heredity: characteristics do not mix.

Now, if a gene found itself in an animal threatened by winter storms, it could rely on its body to do something clever like migrate south or build itself a shelter. Our breathless journey from four billion years ago brings us to just ten million years ago. Past the first insects, fishes, dinosaurs and birds to the time when the biggest-brained creature on the planet (corrected for body size) was probably our ancestor, an ape. At that point, ten million years before the present, there probably lived at least two species of ape in Africa, though there may have been more.

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