The Genetic Code

by Isaac Asimov

An explanation of how DNA and RNA were discovered. It is written in layman's terms, and explained in an interesting way.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology, Genetics, Chemistry

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Works of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.

Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.

Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).

People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.

Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.

Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...

Reviews

[Remo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantástico libro, absolutamente emocionante en su desarrollo y con el rigor de un libro de texto. Asimov, cuando era Asimov, era insuperable. Con este libro descubrí (me salté la biología de 3º por estar fuera un año y al volver no elegí biología de optativa) cómo se replicaba el ADN, algo que me pareció maravillosamente ingenioso. También habla de ARN, de la síntesis de proteínas y de muchas cosas relacionadas, tanto con la historia como con la química. Es un viaje fantástico por la ciencia, absolutamente recomendable.

[Diego Sánchez Pérez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Estoy ante un libro de ciencias muy interesante para aprender sobre el ADN como también de otras moléculas celulares desde un punto de vista de un escritor de ciencia ficción, me parecio particular porque creo yo que para escribir novelas de ese género es genuino tener mucho conocimiento sobre la materia científica para escribir un libro como este para así más adelante escribir ficción a la vez que tenga un mínimo de respeto hacia la ciencia real. A pesar de no entender mucho de ciencias es un libro de biología que recomendaría para aprender más sobre el ADN, además de que contiene dibujos de células para hacer la lectura más educativa. Una particularidad por alguien como Isaac Asimov un escritor que me gusta mucho.

[Mike]

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
-- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"

I picked this up for free from a library give away. As always Asimov is an entertaining read, but I can't really give it a rating since it's rather old and some of the information is outdated (though not really wrong)... but just learning something new helped me through a sad time just as Merlin advertised.

[Curtiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between this book and several of Asimov's other books obout Chemistry, the Good Doctor enabled me to pass eight credits' worth of college Chemistry without taking more than a single High School Chemistry course.

[Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

60 years after this book was written, it’s still a fascinating and entertaining look at the discovery of DNA, written in a way that can be understood by the common person.

Asimov always does a good job of explaining how discoveries came about, writing about the failures, theories, and eventual successes. Here he does that to walk through the discoveries of proteins, amino acids, DNA, and RNA, explaining them up to where they had reached in 1963.

There are a few more things I remember from science classes in college, and I’m sure the details of genetic science are far further along. But as far as the basics, it paints a mostly complete picture to this day.

[Carter Lehman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asimov's The Genetic Code is a short introduction to genetics (and science more generally as Asimov seamlessly stitches genetics to other various scientific disciplines).

I read this book with a friend, in a few hours, without much interlude. I think that it has the appeal of a cheap novel being sold at an airport, yet it has the potency of a textbook.

My reading attention was mostly given to articles and book segments that were of interest to me this year. So, it felt good being able to read and finish entirely such a small, well written, and information dense book.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously there's information that could be updated, as we know more now about DNA & RNA than we did in 1964 (the year my particular edition came out), but Asimov presents a decent easily to understand history of the discovery of the building blocks of life and an understanding of how it works.

[ilya murychev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book which shows way of understanding of inner structure of the cell. Scientific methods of research of DNA, RNA etc. Protein production.

[Luke Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isaac Asimov basically writes genetics for dummies. This dummy really struggles to get it.

[Natalie Waddell-Rutter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book surprisingly interesting. Asimov explained how scientists worked out the details of DNA and RNA. I didn't learn anything new about genetics, but I did get to learn how the science was done. I found it all quite fascinating. I was impressed with the number of Nobel Prizes won by people doing research in the field of early genetics. I didn't expect as much organic chemistry as Asimov provided. There were pages of chemical diagrams and names for all the bits added to proteins. I don't think that level of detail would fly these days.

I did makes notes on details that have changed since the book was published. Asimov stated chromosomes have about 3,000 genes each, whereas current estimates put it at 500-2,000 genes each. 103 elements were discovered in the early 1960s, whereas it's now 118 elements. This book was written before Rosalind Franklin got any credit for her work on the x-ray crystallography of DNA. We've since learned that thymine is more stable, but more energy costly than uracil, which at least partially explains it's use only in RNA. where stability isn't as important. We've also figured out the entire triplet code.

Asimov didn't make too many predictions in the last chapter on the future. He figured anything he'd say would wrong, and it was. Instead, we modify a cell's DNA so a yeast or bacteria will make the proteins for us. In many cases, it's still the cheapest and easiest way to make proteins. Of course, with the new CRISPR-Cas 9 technology, we now have a much better tool to change DNA and make what you want.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again Asimov is at his best, this time explaining DNA and the underlying genetic code in an easy to understand manner. He starts with the fundamentals of the language of chemistry, the symbols for the elements, diagrams of molecules and the basics of organic chemistry. Using this as the foundation, he then describes the structure of amino acids and how they combine to make proteins.
The next question is of course how cells “remember” the sequence of the amino acids in the proteins used to construct it. This requires a digression into the structure of DNA and the correspondence between the components of the DNA molecule and the protein molecule. Asimov also spends a great deal of time describing the historical record of the discoveries of how characteristics are transferred from a parent to their children. This is an excellent book for learning the fundamentals of these transfers.
The line that I found most interesting is the last paragraph of the introduction.

“This book is an attempt, then, to explain the background of the breakthrough; the full meaning of the breakthrough and its immediate consequences; and, finally, a forecast of what the breakthrough may bring about in the future – what the world of 2004 may be like, as seen through my own wishful eyes.”

Now that the referenced year has arrived, how accurate was Asimov’s vision? He is right on many things, accurately predicting the use of microorganisms to create proteins. However, he misses the single most significant event in genetics, the complete sequencing of the human genome.

This review also appears on Amazon

[Senthil Kumaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the serious science books written by Asimov. Asimov takes you through the process of human genetics in a simple way, describing things like describing a character set. He gives a parallel of how 26 english alphabets can form infinite words and infinite sentences can be written, and so it applies that 4 gene characters like (ATGC) - Adeline, Thiamin, Guanine and Cytosine combine into words and form sentences that give multiple different characteristics in life forms. Asimov takes through the discovery of atoms, molecules, polymers, acids, hydroxyl acids and NOH's etc each of which led to a greater discovery of our biological make up. This is the first book in biology, which I found interesting solely because of it's presentation and clarity. Even then, this book has to be read slowly and carefully, because if you miss a connection it is difficult to trace it back. I think that, the whole of biology as a science is not as much as answering a "why" question than it answers "what" questions as it tries to discover something about humans. We try form a connected story from all our discoveries. While reading this book, I missed the flow at times and it was difficult to recollect few things. However, it still was an enjoyable read and made me appreciate scientists who decoded such a complex problem by working hard and connecting the various dots.

[Jeroen Delcour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the clearest introduction to genetics I've ever read. It requires no background knowledge of biology or chemistry, yet by the end of only a few hundred pages you'll know the structure of DNA (and more importantly why is has such a structure), amino acids and how they form proteins, and how the two are related. There's lots of drawings of the important chemical structures and how fit together. Plus, a short history of how it was all discovered.

It obviously doesn't include discoveries made since it was published in 1963, but most of those are simply additions and elaborations on what is already described in the book. I couldn't help but chuckle when Asimov mentioned there are two possible structures for cysteine (with and without an additional methyl group) but the DNA mechanism is indifferent about them - while it has since been discovered that is actually is.

On the other hand, the fact that this book was written back when the genetic code promised to explain all biology and bring an end to disease makes it an amusing read for those who know what hurdles geneticists have stumbled upon since then.

A definite recommend!

[Robu-sensei · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Genetic Code, Dr. Asimov carefully and lucidly provides the scientific background necessary to appreciate the elegant mechanism by which a sequence of DNA nucleotides is translated into a series of amino acids in a protein molecule—work that, at the time of publishing in 1963, was still very far from complete. Because much of the molecular biology in this book is dated or obsolete, I do not recommend this book to anyone who lacks a thorough knowledge of the "central dogma" of molecular biology. On the other hand, to the budding biologist, with the benefit of 45 years of additional knowledge, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the "process" of science, demonstrating how competing hypotheses are winnowed down to build a coherent theory, and illustrating that even what we now consider basic knowledge was once—and not so long ago—shrouded in mystery and controversy.

[Pepe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Asimov non è stato solo un grande romanziere ma anche, era laureato in chimica e biologia, un notevole divulgatore scientifico. Il codice genetico è un brillante esempio di quell'attività divulgativa che diverrà preponderante negli anni sessanta. Libro tecnico ma chiaro e godibile, ripercorre la tappe che portarono alla scoperta del DNA e ci introduce ai meccanismi di replicazione del codice e produzione delle proteine. Unica avvertenza, "Il codice genetico" è del '62 e in oltre quarant'anni molte altre cose sono state scoperte, e capite.

[Curtiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at the discovery of the Genetic Code and its importance as the basis of human heredity.

Between this book and several of Asimov's other books about Chemistry, the Good Doctor enabled me to pass eight credits' worth of college Chemistry without taking more than a single High School Chemistry course.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

An explanation of how DNA and RNA were discovered. It is written in layman's terms, and explained in an interesting way. The information is dated, but it provides good insight into how the scientific research was done up to that point.

[Jishnu Bhattacharya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best part of this book is that it walks through the science, the failures especially and how they shaped the present understanding. Brilliant read.

[Steve Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise explanation of how DNA / RNA work combined with the tale of the progression of discoveries that lead to our current understanding.

[Ayla Ayala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genial!

[Joe B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Asimov is certainly one of science's best expositors. This book is a bit old now, but the writing is still rings clear as a bell. So many permutations!!

[elstaffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounds up to 4 stars. An interesting historical document if nothing else (and there is a great deal of else).

[Chess via Email · Rating 5 out of 5]

It'd be a bit difficult to understand without any background in biology I think.

[Polifemo]

En 1944 se descubrió que un compuesto químico, el ADN (ácido desoxirribonucleico), podía cambiar las bacterias. Posteriormente, descubrimientos acerca del ADN han permitido desde entonces incalculables avances científicos, uno de los cuales es el desciframiento parcial del código genético. Isaac Asimov, el famoso autor científico, explora brillantemente la compleja función de células, cromosomas, moléculas y proteínas, al tiempo que explica este asombroso descubrimiento en la biología molecular. Nos muestra cómo el esquema que contiene el cromosoma dicta las características de un individuo, y de qué manera asegura un plan hereditario de aspecto, inteligencia y estructura corporal. Asimov nos señala las excitantes posibilidades que ahora se brinda a la ciencia a causa del descubrimiento del ADN: el hombre cada vez se acerca más al secreto de la vida. Quizá él mismo sea un día capaz de crear vida en formas nuevas y nunca vistas.