Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced [Hardcover]

Michael Ashburner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2006

This is the story of the sequencing of the fly genome told by one of the participants, Michael Ashburner. Written in a diary-like form, half the story is told in the numerous footnotes. A delightful, candid, irreverent, on-the-scene tale filled with eccentric personalities all focused on a single goal. The book also contains a Prologue that puts Drosophila as a model system in historical context, and an Epilogue that discusses the impact the genome sequence had on the study of Drosophila. Also included are drawings by Lewis Miller of some of the principal characters. Related Titles from the Publisher: Drosophila: A Laboratory Handbook (9780879697068) Drosophila Protocols (9780879698270)

Editorial Reviews

Review

...delightfully fun and surprisingly honest...a whirlwind rock-and-roll tour. -Jonathan M. Flowers, Stony Brook University --The Quarterly Review of Biology

"...reminds us of the earliest critical decisions in the field of genome sequencing." --Liam Keegan, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh (Genetical Research)

In this small and charming book, Won for All, Michael Ashburner gives us a glittering account of the sequencing of the Drosophila genome by a public private partnership between government funded laboratories and Celera Genomics. He portrays both the working life and the good life of science, with neat character sketches set off by Lewis Miller's excellent portraits. Michael's flair for detail and inveterate name dropping, albeit of restaurants rather than people, lends itself nicely to re creating the time and place of key events in this collaboration. The original fast paced manuscript, which I liked so well when I first saw a draft in 2001, has been updated and provided with extensive footnotes that inform without interrupting the narrative. Technical background is given in two excellent postscripts: a fly primer form Scott Hawley, and an overview of fly functional genomics form Ethan Bier. --PLoS Biology

In the small world of Drosophila, few if any figures are as highly revered as Michael Ashburner. In his latest book, the author departs from his encyclopedic volumes on the fly to narrate a short, but fascinating, tale about the people behind the sequencing of the fruit fly genome...

Written in the style of James Watson s Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), this small book provides a delightfully fun and surprisingly honest account of the interactions among the big players of the sequencing effort. The frantic pace, international flavor, and charisma of Ashburner and his colleagues give this firsthand account the feeling of a whirlwind rock and roll tour. The author introduces the rock stars of the genome project with intimate detail, describing who rides a red Honda Nighthawk 750, who has purple hair, and which restaurants in London or New York you are most likely to bump into the stars. With quick witted detail (unconventionally captured primarily in exhaustive and entertaining footnotes, he introduces over 50 geneticists. Informaticians entrepreneurs, and bartenders at the epicenter of the project. If the book has a downside, it is that you will have to take notes if you want to remember who s who in Won for All...

Geneticists, fly pushers of all kinds, and anyone interested in the political and social maneuvering that takes place in modern science should enjoy Ashburner s account of how the Drosophila genome was won. --The Quarterly Review of Biology

In this small and charming book, Won for All, Michael Ashburner gives us a glittering account of the sequencing of the Drosophila genome by a public private partnership between government funded laboratories and Celera Genomics. He portrays both the working life and the good life of science, with neat character sketches set off by Lewis Miller's excellent portraits. Michael's flair for detail and inveterate name dropping, albeit of restaurants rather than people, lends itself nicely to re creating the time and place of key events in this collaboration. The original fast paced manuscript, which I liked so well when I first saw a draft in 2001, has been updated and provided with extensive footnotes that inform without interrupting the narrative. Technical background is given in two excellent postscripts: a fly primer form Scott Hawley, and an overview of fly functional genomics form Ethan Bier. --PLoS Biology

In the small world of Drosophila, few if any figures are as highly revered as Michael Ashburner. In his latest book, the author departs from his encyclopedic volumes on the fly to narrate a short, but fascinating, tale about the people behind the sequencing of the fruit fly genome...

Written in the style of James Watson s Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), this small book provides a delightfully fun and surprisingly honest account of the interactions among the big players of the sequencing effort. The frantic pace, international flavor, and charisma of Ashburner and his colleagues give this firsthand account the feeling of a whirlwind rock and roll tour. The author introduces the rock stars of the genome project with intimate detail, describing who rides a red Honda Nighthawk 750, who has purple hair, and which restaurants in London or New York you are most likely to bump into the stars. With quick witted detail (unconventionally captured primarily in exhaustive and entertaining footnotes, he introduces over 50 geneticists. Informaticians entrepreneurs, and bartenders at the epicenter of the project. If the book has a downside, it is that you will have to take notes if you want to remember who s who in Won for All...

Geneticists, fly pushers of all kinds, and anyone interested in the political and social maneuvering that takes place in modern science should enjoy Ashburner s account of how the Drosophila genome was won. --The Quarterly Review of Biology

About the Author

Michael Ashburner is Professor of Biology in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. By training and inclination, he is a Drosophila geneticist, although for more than a decade, he has not been where he belongs-the lab bench-but in front of computer screens. He spent six yearrs at the European Bioinformatics Institute, first as the Institutes Research Programme Coordinator, and then as its Joint Head. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and an Honorary Foreign member of nthe American Academy of the Arts and Sciences

Product Details

• Hardcover: 100 pages
• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 1st edition (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879698020
• ISBN-13: 978-0879698027
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,911,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Try not not to confuse a passion for doing things right with 'arrogance', June 27, 2006

By 

R. Scott Hawley (Overland Park, Kansas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced (Hardcover)

Having read paise and criticism (both deserved and not) for my own books on Amazon, I'm pretty tthick-skinned about the content of the reviews posted on these pages. They are after all just the reader's opinion, and we are all entitled to our own thoughts, however right or wrong they might be. But I must take issue with Charles Middaugh's review of both Michael Ashburner's book (Won for All) and of Michael Ashburner himself. Most importantly, I take serious umbrage at the claim that Michael is arrogant. I've known this man for three decades and I've written a book with him. I also wrote the epilogue for this book. Michael is brilliant, incredibly dedicated to science, and the truest scholar I know. But there is not an arrogant bone in Michael's body. Indeed, in my draft of the epilogue to Michael's book, I actually refered to him as a "hero". He insisted on re-writing that line, claiming that refering to him as a hero was both un-necessary and un-true. (Ironically, I have since been taken to task for letting Michael alter my description of him and his actions by two of my colleagues who reviewed the book for major scientific journals. They aver, and I agree, that Michael is indeed a hero in the classic sense of the word!) Michael is actually quite modest. What Dr. Middaugh reads as "arrogance" is the fact that Michael was one of the three leaders of the team of many people who sequenced the fly genome. He, perhaps more than any of us, realized just how critical this task was, and how much was at stake for the future of the community of fly geneticists. He knew how important it was that the sequence be done right and, just as importantly, he knew that there could be no compromise, as in none at all, in terms of making that sequence fully and freely available to the entire scientific community. The story Michael tells provides a picture of his constant and uncompromising commitments to those goals. It wasn't an easy task and there were times when pretty heroic tasks by Michael and a few others were required. And in the end, those battles, and most especially the battle for full and free access to the sequence by the community, was Won for All (hence the name of the book!). This is the story of that drama - REAL SCIENCE, REAL PEOPLE,and sometimes very real disagreements. It is a picture of how science is really done. There is no arrogance here, just an uncompromising passion to get a very difficult job done right. If you want to know how science is really done, especially big-project science, read this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A short history of Drosophila genetics, March 23, 2007

By 

Petter Portin "drosophilist" (Turku, Finland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced (Hardcover)

The best part in this book the history of Drosophila genetics. Otherwise the book is an exciting and interesting story of the present day big science including hard competition between different partners. Being a Finn I found the language of the book quite difficult with all the playing on words. I believe the book oppens only for people who are already in the field. As such is not so good as Watson's "Double helix" which even a layman can follow and find exciting.

4.0 out of 5 stars After all, scientifics are human. Mostly standard nerds., July 8, 2007

By 

Jorge Vallejo "Jorgemán" (Valencia, Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced (Hardcover)

What is in this book for us?

If you are interested in how science is made before the process is sanitized for classrooms and papers, this book can give you a good insight. If you want a book to learn the basics in Drosophila genomics, just try another.

This is the story - told by a person near the center of the events - of one of the great achievements of modern genetics, the sequencing of the complete genome of one major genetic model, Drosophila melanogaster.

The story told in this book isn't about technology and experiments. It is about the people behind them. Real people; passionate, whimsical, ambitious. We learn that science is forged throughout the clashing of opposing wills, alliances, random events and good will.

I won't recommend it for people not initiated in Drosophila - though Hawley's Epilogue and Bier's Afterword make for a good primer - or at least in genomics. My own knowledge about that field is quite shallow and I got lost sometimes.

Ashburner wrote it in just a weekend, using a quite colloquial tone and probably didn't think at first in publishing it. That's the reason it will be more enjoyed by people who already knows who is who in the field and followed that genoma race when it happened.
Nevertheless the numerous footnotes help to clarify the obscure details.