Cracking The Genome: Inside The Race To Unlock Human Dna [Hardcover]

Kevin Davies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2001

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA. The discovery was a profound, Nobel Prize-winning moment in the history of genetics, but it did not decipher the messages on the twisted, ladderlike strands within our cells. No one knew what the human genome sequence actually was. No one had cracked the code of life. Now, at the beginning of a new millennium, that code has been cracked.

Kevin Davies, founding editor of the leading journal in the field, "Nature Genetics," has relentlessly followed the story as it unfolded, week by week, for ten years. Here for the first time, in rich human, scientific, and financial detail, is the dramatic story of one of the greatest scientific feats ever accomplished: the mapping of the human genome.

In 1990, the U.S. government approved a 15-year, $3 billion plan to launch the Human Genome Project, whose goal was to sequence the 3 billion letters of human DNA. At the helm of the project was James Watson, who resigned after only a couple of years, following a feud with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Bernadine Healy over gene patenting. His successor was the brilliant young medical geneticist Francis Collins, who had made his name discovering the gene for cystic fibrosis. As Davies reports, Collins is a devout Christian who has traveled to Africa to work in a missionary hospital. He believes the human genome sequence is "the language of God." Just as Collins became project director, J. Craig Venter, a maverick DNA sequencer and Vietnam veteran, was leaving the NIH to start his own private research institute. Venter had developed a simple "shotgun" strategy for sequencing DNA, and his fameskyrocketed when his new institute proved his sequencing system worked by becoming the first to sequence the entire genome of a microorganism.

Only 3 percent of the human genome had been sequenced by early 1998, the public project's halfway point. That same year, Venter was approached by PE Corporation to launch a private human genome project. He stunned the world when he announced the formation of a new company to sequence the human genome in a mere three years for $300 million. A war of words broke out between public and private researchers. Undeterred, Venter built Celera Genomics with the motto "Speed matters. Discovery can't wait." and an $80 million supercomputer. While the insults intensified, Celera's stock price soared, tumbled, and soared again. Negotiations for cooperation between the public and private institutes began, only to fall apart in acrimony. Then in the spring of 2000 President Clinton stepped in, telling his science adviser to restart negotiations. History was about to be made.

Davies captures the drama of this momentous achievement, drawing on his own genetics expertise and interviews with key scientists including Venter and Collins, as well as Eric Lander, an MIT computer wizard who refers to the public genome project as "the forces of good"; Kari Stefansson, the genetics entrepreneur who is remaking Iceland's economy; and John Sulston, chief of the UK genome project, who led the charge against gene patenting. Davies has visited geneticists around the world to illustrate a vast international enterprise working on the frontier of human knowledge. "Cracking the Genome" is the definitive account of how the code that holds the answers to the origin of life,the evolution of humanity, and the future of medicine was broken.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What makes science happen? The confluence of politics, commerce, and the age-old quest for knowledge is nowhere better seen than in the ongoing Human Genome Project. Kevin Davies, founding editor of Nature Genetics, picks apart the personalities and technologies involved in the great sequence race in Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA. Written not long after President Clinton's premature announcement in 2000 of the Project's completion, it assesses the state of public and private genomic knowledge during what Davies calls "halftime." He is in a unique observational position; as a prominent scientific journalist, he has had unparalleled access to the scientific figures involved. Through interviews with HGP director Francis Collins, rogue scientist-entrepreneur J. Craig Venter, and many other scientists and insiders, Davies illuminates the often-tortured processes that contributed to the speedy sequencing of most--but not quite all--of our genes in just a few short years. Shifting styles characterize the different storylines: technological, political, and intensely personal tales unite under the author's direction without ever alienating the reader. The book is a bit softer on Venter than many scientists (who may perceive him as traitorous or, worse, too hasty to publish) would like, taking the position that his shotgun approach and competitive spirit improved the project without sacrificing quality. Conversely, Davies sits out the gene-patenting controversy, offering all sides a fairly equal voice, but never quite finding sympathy with any of them. Summing up his subject, Davies reports:

If the double helix is the prevailing image of the twentieth century, just as the steam engine signified the nineteenth century, then the sequence--the vast expanse of 3 billion As, Cs, Gs, and Ts--is destined to define the century to come.... The childhood of the human race is about to come to an end.

These are strong words, but few other fields provide a stronger basis for such hope. Cracking the Genome gives us the chance to catch up with the present while the future races on. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

The Human Genome Project, the effort to determine the full genetic composition of human beings, has consumed billions of dollars, involved thousands of scientists, captured the imaginations of millions of people and offered the promise of untold numbers of medical breakthroughs. Davies, founding editor of the journal Nature Genetics and author of Breakthrough: The Race to find the Breast Cancer Gene, does an impressive job of contextualizing the science within a political, economic and social framework, creating a lively tale as accessible to nonspecialists as it is to scientists. A quest for profits as well as accolades is shown to be an important force in shaping "what is, at the very least, an extraordinary technological achievement, and is at best perhaps the defining moment in the evolution of mankind." Most of the leading scientists involved, individuals such as James Watson, Nobel laureate and original director of the Human Genome Project; Francis Collins, Watson's successor; and J. Craig Venter, the entrepreneurial scientist who decided to compete with the publicly funded Human Genome Project using private money and untested computational methods, spoke openly with Davies about their hopes and desires. Davies does a fine job describing the basic molecular biology and genetics underlying the Project as well as many of the ways our newfound knowledge may be put to use, though he largely ignores the ethical considerations swirling around a lot of these options. (Jan.) Forecast: The Free Press hopes publication will coincide with the public joint release of the human genome sequence by the Human Genome Project and Craig Venter's Celera Genomics. Spurred by that burst of publicity, the same readers who put Matt Ridley's Genome on the New York Times paperback bestseller list may provide brisk sales of this title as well.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1ST edition (January 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743204794
• ISBN-13: 978-0743204798
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,609,162 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born and raised in London, Kevin Davies studied at Oxford University and moved to the U.S. in 1987 after earning his PhD in genetics. He endured two years at the bench before seeking refuge in the editorial office of Nature magazine. He was the founding editor of the journal Nature Genetics and has also worked at Cell Press and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is currently the editor of Bio-IT World magazine, based in Boston.

"The $1,000 Genome" is Kevin's third book, and second for the Free Press. He published "Cracking the Genome," about the race for the Human Genome Project, in 2000. His first book, "Breakthrough," co-authored with Michael White, was about the race to identify the "breast cancer gene" in the mid-90s.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Cracking the Genome - More Information, Please, February 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cracking The Genome: Inside The Race To Unlock Human Dna (Hardcover)

I bought this book last week, and I'm about half way through it. I have a problem with Davies explanations of the "gene searches" that he recounts. I am not a biologist, but I have a reasonable background on the topic of DNA and protein synthesis. The main issue is that he does not provide enough information to really understand the techniques involved in mapping and sequencing DNA. He seems to be assuming either that the reader has some background knowledge in laboratory techniques, or really doesn't care. For example, he describes the technique "positional cloning", stating that it rapidly increases searching through millions of base pairs once you have found the chromosome of the disorder. He even describes a fragment of the technique, saying that the ends of a region of the DNA are ligated to form a ring which allows "jumping", which is preferrable to "walking" along the sequence. As a reader, I don't really understand the full scope of the problem, and so I can't really appreciate the improvement in technique that was invented. Another example of this is when he describes how Eric Lander proposed using bacteria growing in a petry dish, which has been augmented with mutated genes from a population of humans with a genetic disorder, to ferret out the location of the mutation on the gene. He describes the goal, and the gist of the technique, but neglets to tie it together, to facilitate comprehension of why it actually works. There are many other examples of this.

Other than that, I am enjoying the book, and I have gotten some comprehension of the problems that the genetecists are trying to solve. For example, his description of Craig Venter's technique of sequencing cDNA is quite good. Also, his description of the method (divide and conquer) Venter et. al. used to speed up the sequencing of the whole Genome of some kinds of bacteria was quite intuitive. Although here again, the magic of the computer program algorithmically re-assembling the pieces of sequenced DNA was a bit mysterious. His historical accounts of the scientists, the politics, the agencies, etc, is quite good.

Overall, I would recommend this book. Especially if you don't care as much about the technical details as I do. And even if you do, perhaps a textbook companion would help.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable and accurate view of events, December 9, 2000

By 

Martin Pollard (El Cerrito, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cracking The Genome: Inside The Race To Unlock Human Dna (Hardcover)

This is an extremely readable account of personalities and events that have occurred in the genome field during the last decade (plus some). It is basically two books. One is the story about the politics and events surrounding the public and private efforts to sequence the human genome. The other is a brief survey of medical genetics to put the genome sequencing effort in context. By medical genetics I mean the genetically unusual and useful individuals and populations that geneticists study to find and understand disease genes. For example: the Huntington's disease story. The medical genetics stories have all been reported on in other books of this type but the comprehensive account of the public/private genome efforts is worth reading to those who have been following the magazine and newspaper accounts. It essentially collates all of the stories and news bites of the last several years into a single coherent narrative. As an earlier review noted it is short on science but that is what makes the book a good read. You can pick up the minimal science facts necessary from many other books and web sites.

I've been an engineer in the DOE genome program for about 10 years now. Many of the stories in the book I've heard first hand from people who were either in the room or were participants in the events. It is as accurate a version as any I've seen. Usually I shy away from these types of books but this one is a must read if you really want to get beyond the hype of the popular press.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important stories of our time. A must-read, February 13, 2001

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cracking The Genome: Inside The Race To Unlock Human Dna (Hardcover)

Although science is not everyone's favorite subject, the story of the sequencing of the human genome is of importance to every person on the planet.

The story of the Human Genome Project itself, which is an illustration of how the private sector can succeed where government funded projects have difficulties, is interesting in itself. Even outside of the medical and ethical implications, this story is worth reading for that information alone.

But where this book really provides important food for thought is in the medical and ethical arena. It is now possible to find the location and coding for diseases and potential diseases using this information. How will we use this information? To create cures for devastating degenerative diseases like Huntington's, to find cures for the incurable? Or will we use it to deny medical care to people deemed potential insurance risks.

One thing that came out of the study was the surprising small number of genes that comprise the genome--one third the number that had long been predicted. Clearly, the genome is an instruction set, and the blueprints to build a human, and the errors that create disease, are written in how the genes are interpreted by the biological mechanism.

How we should utilize this information, for good or evil, in years to come will surely be some of the most controversial and important discussions we will have. This book is an excellent place to start in order to understand the basis of this world-shaking achievement.