Customer Reviews

Understanding the Genome (Science Made Accessible)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is one in a series by Scientific American that has been published with the intent to give an overview of various themes in science to a lay audience. This book on genomics is a reprint of various articles that have been published in SciAm (in either magazine or web formats). The articles include: articles on J. Craig Venter and Francis Collins (the two de facto leaders of the Human Genome Project), an article co-written by Dr. Collins, articles on business and philosophical aspects of genomics, etc.

Overall, I thought this book was interesting. It doesn't get the 5th star because of the sort of hodge-podge feel to the book (it is an anthology of somewhat disparate articles not originally intended to be published together) ... which more assertive editing may have solved. But, all-in-all, considering the low price tag, I would recommend the book to those who are interested in the subject and do not own copies of the relevant SciAm back issues.

This book is a collection of articles and columns from issues of Scientific American between March 1996 and April 2001. This date range represents a long time in molecular biology and now some of the articles are dated. For example, several articles estimate that humans have 100,000 genes; a more recent textbook gives the number of human genes in the range 25,000-40,000. Also, this book is part of the "Science Made Accessible" series so the reader should not expect much technical depth. An exception is the interview with Stuart Kauffman which tends to uses undefined technical terminology such as "canalizing input" and "cis site." Better editing could have brought the articles up-to-date and provided definitions (especially for the Kauffman interview) to make the material more "accessible."

So why do I give this book a four-star rating? Because of its coverage of human genome issues. A couple of articles discuss genetic discrimination and insurance. Another couple of articles discuss bioinformatics (biology as an information science). I thought one of these articles, the interview with Kauffman mentioned earlier, was the most interesting in its discussion of gene regulatory circuits. Several articles discuss the history of the publically funded Human Genome Project and the privately funded Celera group. Many articles are concerned with the medical advances that may result from having sequenced the human genome. Perhaps what this short (150 page) volume best provides is a hopeful view of where biology and medicine are headed (the genetic discrimination issue is somewhat less hopeful) and I recommend this book for its glimpse of the future.

The Human Genome Project (HGP) has been an ongoing research project for many years. Throughout this book, it is explained in different scientific essays what the project is about and what exactly the human genome is. Although this book is quite outdated, for it was published in 2002, it is a great introduction to understanding the genome and what it is about. As previously stated, there are scientific essays as well as interviews between Scientific American (where the book actually came from) and the scientists themselves.

The articles and essays that are contained in this very short read cover a wide range about human genomics. That is one thing that I liked about this book. The articles, although based mostly around one point of view, (scientific as opposed to ethical), cover all the bases concerning the HGP. For example, it covers both sides of the fact that drugs that can cure diseases may be discovered in the future. It may sound crazy, but like everything, there are people that go against things like this.

The book was relatively easy to understand. There was no need to look up words very often, for they explained it all to you. The point of the book was for scientists and the regular man alike to have a better understanding of the genome. If you really want to know more about this interesting topic, I would definitely recommend reading this book. In addition to this book, you should pick up another, more recent one too, because so much has happened regarding the Human Genome Project since 2002. It is a short, quick, easy to understand book that has a lot of information. If you are just now beginning to want to know about the HGP, you should read Understanding the Genome for a solid grounding about the subject.

This book gives a great background of the scientific advances in studying the human genome as of 2002. Unfortunately, a lot more innovation and discovery has occurred since then so this book is up-to-date. However, this book is a great tool for learning the basics of human DNA and where we were in the beginning of our new millennium.
This short book is really a collection of essays taken from experts in the fields concerning the study of the human genome. The essays give factual information concerning the subject as well as the issues that go along with this scientific advancement. The first step of the genome investigation was to sequence the human genome into the bases A, C, G, and T. The two main groups competing for the completion of human DNA were the Human Genome Project (HGP) and Celera Genomics. HGP, a publicly funded organization, sequenced DNA by breaking apart a human's 23 chromosomes and finding the DNA bases of each small piece of the DNA. Celera, a privately funded group, broke apart the entire genome sequence at once and relied on master computers to build then back together in the base code. Both groups successfully completed the code in the summer of 2000.
Today, scientists are trying to answer the more important questions of how and why the human genome works. Many groups, especially large pharmaceutical companies, hope that this investigation will lead to future drugs that can cure illnesses brought on by differences in individuals' DNA. However, worries have arisen with these hopeful advances. Some fear that genetic discrimination will cause the public to lose their insurance and be rejected by employers. Others worry about the effect on people's mental health of knowing they are at risk for a fatal disease.
This book is a good reference for people who want to know the basics of the human genome and problems that could grow with increasing genetic testing. However, I would recommend trying another book if you want up-to-date information on the studies of human DNA. This book also talks briefly about the human genome itself, often using scientific phrasing. Therefore, I would recommend starting off with another resource if you have never even heard about DNA. This book is certainly not entertaining, but it is a good resource for someone who wants to learn more about the start of the investigation of the human genome.

I thought the book Understanding the Genome wasn't a very good book. In the beginning of the book, the scientific concepts were easy to understand and follow, but then as I kept reading the concepts became more and more confusing until eventually I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Also, this book is kind of outdated to what is currently going on now with the Genome Project and other breakthroughs with genomics. Unless the reader understands and has studied DNA and genomics, I would not recommend this book. It is definately not a book someone would want to pick out for light reading. This book consisted of essays written by or about scientists in the field of genomics. I may say though that this book was atleast very discriptive of concepts and contained pictures and diagrams of different concepts.