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Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance Paperback – January 1, 2012
Nessa Carey (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherIcon Books
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2012
- Dimensions6.02 x 0.88 x 9.21 inches
- ISBN-109781848313477
- ISBN-13978-1848313477
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Product details
- ASIN : 1848313470
- Publisher : Icon Books; Reprint edition (January 1, 2012)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 9781848313477
- ISBN-13 : 978-1848313477
- Item Weight : 9.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.02 x 0.88 x 9.21 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #924,304 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #265 in Cell Biology (Books)
- #398 in Molecular Biology (Books)
- #531 in Microbiology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
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Here's the official version...
Nessa Carey has a virology PhD from the University of Edinburgh and is a former Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology at Imperial College, London. She has worked in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry for ten years. She lives in Bedfordshire and this is her first book.
And what else?
After leaving school I went to the University of Edinburgh to become a vet. This didn't last because I was allergic to fur, unable to think in 3D (not good for anatomy), quite bored and really rubbish at the course. So I dropped out and at Catford Job Centre, in amongst the ads for short order chefs (I couldn't cook) and van drivers (I couldn't drive), was one for a forensic scientist. And oddly enough I had always wanted to work at this end of crime - I must have been the only kid in the UK who had read a biography of Bernard Spilsbury by the age of 11.
So for five years I worked at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Lab in London and studied part-time. I then realised that I loved academic science and went off to do a PhD. At the University of Edinburgh. In the veterinary faculty.
After that, it was the academic route of post-doc, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer. But I had a tendency to wander off on routes that intrigued me - degree in Immunology, PhD in Virology, post-doc in Human Genetics, academic position in Molecular Biology. Such wandering isn't necessarily the best idea in academia but the breadth of experience is really valued in industry. I've spent 10 years in biotech and have recently moved to the pharmaceutical sector.
And outside of work? I love birdwatching (no, I don't have a life-list), cycling, scavenging stuff from skips, and growing vegetables. I have a fantasy about one day having a smallholding (where I will starve to death if I really have to be self-sufficient) and I can't wait to write my next book. And I can now cook. And drive.
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The criticism of its intended audience being unclear is fair. At times, it seems to be aimed at a rather lay audience with slightly odd analogies that over simplify almost to a fault. A few pages later, jargon and technicalities are tossed around that definitely require a solid background in biology to follow with any ease. This has the discordant effect of making the simplistic analogies seem even more odd. It can’t seem to decide if it expects you to remember only basic high school biology or if it prefers you’ve had at least a couple of undergraduate level courses in molecular biology and genetics.
That being said, it was incredibly helpful in updating my understanding of this field. As a biology major in the ‘90s, this field was so nascent that it was barely addressed, let alone studied thoroughly. As a teacher of AP Bio in high school today, I needed an update on vertebrate gene regulation in order to be able to competently address the topic in my classroom. This book provided exactly that. While I won’t be teaching most of the advanced details in this book, I will be adjusting a few critical things to ensure alignment with today’s knowledge.
Even better, it reminded me why I have always found genetics so fascinating. It’s even more so now than it was 25 years ago. As so often happens in emerging fields, each intriguing answer leads to dozens more questions. If you think the way a basic prokaryotic operon works is pretty cool, learning about mammalian epigenetic gene regulation will make your brain geek out with intellectual joy.
Lacking is discourse on possible misuses of epigenetic insights and perhaps some speculations on the uses of epigenetics for steering the future of human evolution. But these are not really essential in this book, though I would love to know the views of the author.
Disturbing is a rather narrow epistemology of science. It is not true that science must avoid domains “where it is impossible to develop the testable hypotheses that are the cornerstone of all scientific enquiry” (p.235) , Leaving aside the social sciences, large parts of astronomy, evolutionary psychology and also the science of evolution are far from fully satisfying this requirement. Abduction, as proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce in his work on the logic of science and expanded later, is ignored. The proposed mechanistic models ignore quantum mechanics. And, to conclude this list of disturbing statements, I wonder how the author would elaborate her statement “A phenomenon can have a mechanistic basis, without being deterministic” (p. 235) at a workshop on free will attended by philosophers of the mind and brain scientists.
The main part of the book on epigenetics deserves five stars and is strongly recommended. I choose to ignore superfluous statements irrelevant for the core contents and suggest that readers do so too.
Professor Yehezkel Dror
I learned a lot from this book and want to learn more about this topic. I did find it difficult to stay engaged, partly because of Carey’s abundant use of adverbs, and partly because I’m not well versed in biology. Maybe if I had a better basic understanding before going in – it’s been a long time since I took a college biology course – it would’ve been more engaging for me. Overall a great introduction to the field.
I felt there was too great an emphasis on epigenetic causes of human diseases, about which fairly little is known (except for a few rare but well-explored cases). Therefore, I only skimmed the last few chapters.
I read this book and also took a Coursera online course in epigenetics, but I still have no clear idea about the relationship between genetics and epigenetics as applied to inheritance patterns. I cannot imagine how to add epigenetic dynamics to the biological models I work with, or if they make any difference at all to population biology.
Read it as an informal textbook to an academic class in Epigenetics. Probably got 33% of all the learning from the book and 67% from the class, and I have a suspicion the the basic lessons of the book will stick more than the forest of class details about what protein acetylates what unit of the histone.
Would possibly be nice to expose a little more of the molecular detail, without frightening horses and small children.
Top reviews from other countries


Again, later in the book, it is suggested that the permanence of methylation makes it the ideal candidate as the cause of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Only after this idea has been developed in detail is it stated that memory may also be epigenetically determined. Memory, of course, is a far bigger subject than PTSD, and a very complicated one in which the growth of both new connections and new synapses (and possibly glial cells) has long been recognised as a perfectly good explanation of how neurons build and strengthen association. These processes may indeed be under control of epigenetics, but epigenetics isn't necessary for an explanation - again transcription factor cascades, or just the fact that synapses remain once they have been induced to form by neural firing are sufficient. PTSD undoubtedly arises out of memory; and especially emotional memory which appears to get separated from other memories, but memory is a much more complex process than can just be put down to epigenetics. I'm not saying that epigenetics isn't important - I think it's hugely important; just that Carey tends to jump to conclusions in a less than thorough way.
There is much mention of 'mental illness' in the book, again with methylation implicated especially in the 'diseases' of PTSD and 'depression'. While the author does a great, and much needed job of explaining how paradigm shifts can take a long time in science because of inertia in the system which resists the overthrow of established ideas, she is clearly unaware of the paradigm shift that has long been underway in the field of so called 'mental illness', especially in the UK, where DSM (the Diagnostic Statistical Manual) has long been viewed with disdain by many psychiatrists, clinical psychogist, and therapists. I suspect that the author's involvement in the pharmaceuticals field has blinded her to this. Many experts, such as Professor Richard Bental ('Doctoring the Minds' and 'Madness Explained') regard depression and even schizophrenia as understandable consequences of pressure from society and family (see also R D Laing's 'Politics of the Family' etc and Bateson's double bind hypothesis). Carey's search for a simple 'cause', though valid to some degree, is much too crude, and ignores so many complex factors. Her quoting of identical twin studies (too often glibly trotted out in general) needs to be questioned. Even twins who grow up together don't share the same experiences - one might have been traumatised, chastised, or otherwise changed in a fleeting moment while the other was absent - this is what creates differing personalities, and it does so through memory, the functioning of the mind, and even psychosomatic effects. All of these are down to neural networks, and we don't understand the functioning of neural networks yet, even at a quite basic level. It's jumping to conclusions to think that epigenetics is suddenly the key to 'mental illness'. An interesting fact about PTSD which caught my attention years ago, is that the commonly prescribed beta-blocker, propranolol, has been found to prevent PTSD if given to soldiers prior to battle. It is also said to 'kill conscience', and there is considerable evidence from research that emotional memories are erased and then put back when we remember events, and that re-living traumatic events while taking propranolol can block that 'putting back'. This poses serious questions for the role of methylation - how is the methylation in neurons involved in emotional memories undone every time we remember something; and if memories are constantly erased and put back, even those causing PTSD, doesn't that rather conflict with the argument that the permanence of methylation is the key? And does propranolol in fact affect methylation or some process around it (a topic for research)?
As I said, I'm not the average reader, having been passionately involved in these subjects for thirty or more years, and I know just how mind-bogglingly complicated they are becoming. All the more credit to Nessa Carey for tackling them in a book now, because studying papers is exhausting and takes time, even when you have access to them, and we need books that try to summarise, and access to other's ideas, if what E O Wilson calls 'consilience' across science disciplines is to be achieved. A great book, and I look forward to reading the next one on 'Junk' DNA when it comes out.

And yet – Identical (Zygotic) Twins, over their life-cycle, can turn out different in many ways. Why?
Our cell life is a lot more complex than just the template of our D.N.A; there are other factors playing on the top of this genetic code, switching certain options “off” and “on”. Welcome to the world Epigenetics.
As someone who had heard of this term being banded around in science articles and TV shows, I wanted to learn a little bit more – after all, when I did Biology at School (in the mid 1990’s) this stuff certainly wasn’t mentioned on the public radar.
Nessa Carey has written an excellent book helping “numpties” like myself grasp hold of this new and exiting field in biology. It’s not a book that is shy of using biological terminology, and it involved me grappling with imagery that I had never even imagined before; but that’s the exciting thing about science! As well as providing you with the knowledge of why your male tortoiseshell cat will be infertile, this book will give you a greater appreciation of the complexity of life at a cellular level.

I picked it up because I wanted to know just what DNA methylation was and I came away learning that and much more.
It needs to be read in chronological order because subsequent chapters build on previous explanations. I came with a basic knowledge of genetics which was sufficient for understanding. The basics are given as well, but don't detract from the more detailed scientific content. I would say it is suitable for anybody with GCSE biology behind them, but imagine most readers will be educated to A level or beyond. If you have a degree in genetic science this will be too simple for you.
I can say that I have not enjoyed a non-fiction book so much in a long time. Definitely recommended.

When the human genome project finished sequencing human DNA at the beginning of the century it seemed as though we had the fundamental material on which to ground our genetic understanding. But only 2% of the DNA is responsible for making the building blocks of the embryo. Is the rest of the DNA really junk or are there other things going on?
If identical twins have identical genetic make up and genes are the only factor affecting development, how can the twins develop differently as they get older?
If genes are immutable how can environmental changes have long term biological consequences? Audrey Hepburn's mother was pregnant in Holland during the great Dutch famine of 1944-45. Audrey Hepburn was affected throughout life by stunted growth and poor health. But more than that, not only did offspring of mothers starved in early pregnancy suffer from a tendency to obesity as they inherited the compensation mechanism for starvation, but so did the grandchildren. Clearly an environmental change with biological consequences can be passed on down the generations.
Epigenetics holds the answer. Whenever two genetically identical individuals are non-identical in some way - this is epigenetics. When a change in environment has biological consequences that last long after the event itself we are seeing an epigenetic effect in action. Cells read the genetic code in DNA more like a script that needs interpretation. Epigenetics controls the switching on an off of genes as it interpretes the script.
Nessa Carey delves deep into the mechanism. At fertilisation the zygote is a single cell resulting from the fusion of one egg and one sperm. As various cells of the body begin to differentiate each cell becomes specialised. Once it is specialised you cannot easily unspecialise it. However Nessa Carey vividly tells the story of how Professor Yamanaka did just that. He developed a technique to switch off genes. Incidentally she also vividly describes the intense competition between research scientists and often vicious attacks on each other.
Epigenetics depends upon the ability for genes to be switched on and switched off. Nessa describes in great detail how methylation of DNA and histone action causes genes to be switched on or switched off. It is mesmerising to learn about the science even if I cannot remember it!
The excitement involved in the potential of gene therapy and the development of epigenetic drugs to treat cancer is infectious. Epigenetics may be controversial in the scientific community. It makes for a very stimulating if heavy book.