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Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene
From the spring of 1976 to the fall of 1978, three laboratories competed in a feverish race to clone a human gene for the first time, a feat that ultimately produced the world's first genetically engineered drug--the life-sustaining hormone insulin. Invisible Frontiers gives us a
behind-the-scenes look at the three main groups at Harvard University, the University of California-San Francisco, and a team of upstart scientists at Genentech, the first company devoted to the use of genetic engineering in the creation of pharmaceuticals. When the dust had settled, one scientist
had won a Nobel Prize, many others had become biotech's first millionaires, and the key technologies were in place that set the stage for the human genome project. Author Stephen Hall weaves together the scientific, social and political threads of this story--the fierce rivalry between labs, the
fateful clash of egos within labs, the invasion of academia by commerce, the public fears about genetic engineering, the threat of government regulation, and the ultimate triumph of modern biology--to give us an outstanding tale of scientific research.
In this fast-paced, gripping narrative Hall captures the highlights--and high jinks--of one of the greatest eras in recent biological the discovery of recombinant DNA and the birth of biotechnology.
behind-the-scenes look at the three main groups at Harvard University, the University of California-San Francisco, and a team of upstart scientists at Genentech, the first company devoted to the use of genetic engineering in the creation of pharmaceuticals. When the dust had settled, one scientist
had won a Nobel Prize, many others had become biotech's first millionaires, and the key technologies were in place that set the stage for the human genome project. Author Stephen Hall weaves together the scientific, social and political threads of this story--the fierce rivalry between labs, the
fateful clash of egos within labs, the invasion of academia by commerce, the public fears about genetic engineering, the threat of government regulation, and the ultimate triumph of modern biology--to give us an outstanding tale of scientific research.
In this fast-paced, gripping narrative Hall captures the highlights--and high jinks--of one of the greatest eras in recent biological the discovery of recombinant DNA and the birth of biotechnology.
334 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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210 people want to read
About the author
Stephen S. Hall
10 books31 followersFor nearly three decades, Stephen S. Hall has written about the intersection of science and society in books, magazine articles, and essays. He is the author, most recently, of Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience (2010), which grew out of a 2007 cover article in The New York Times Magazine.
His previous books include Size Matters: How Height Affects the Health, Happiness, and Success of Boys—and the Men They Become (2006), Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension (2003), A Commotion in the Blood: Life, Death, and the Immune System (1997), Mapping the Next Millennium: How Computer-Driven Cartography Is Revolutionizing the Face of Science (1992), and Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene (1987). Most titles were acknowledged as a “Notable Book of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review.
Hall has received numerous awards, including the “Science in Society Award” in 2004 for book writing from the National Association of Science Writers for Merchants of Immortality, which was also a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the William B. Coley Award in 1998 from the Cancer Research Institute for A Commotion in the Blood. His work has also been widely anthologized, including in Best American Science Writing (2000, 2001, 2008, 2009), A Literary Companion to Science (1990), and The Beholder’s Eye (2005).
Between 1997 and 2000, Hall served as an editor of the New York Times Magazine as well as a Contributing Writer, and has published numerous cover stories for the Magazine. In addition to the New York Times, his journalism has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, New York, Science, The New Yorker, Technology Review, Scientific American, Discover, Smithsonian, and many other national publications. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Orion, and the Hastings Center Report.
In addition to writing, Hall teaches science journalism and explanatory journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and also conducts writing workshops for scientists-in-training at New York University’s Carter Institute of Journalism. His many public appearances include a keynote address at the Keystone Symposium, grand rounds at university medical centers, lectures at the Hastings Center, and readings that have been featured on “Book TV.”
Hall graduated as an honors student in English literature from Beloit College in 1973, and lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and two children.
His previous books include Size Matters: How Height Affects the Health, Happiness, and Success of Boys—and the Men They Become (2006), Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension (2003), A Commotion in the Blood: Life, Death, and the Immune System (1997), Mapping the Next Millennium: How Computer-Driven Cartography Is Revolutionizing the Face of Science (1992), and Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene (1987). Most titles were acknowledged as a “Notable Book of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review.
Hall has received numerous awards, including the “Science in Society Award” in 2004 for book writing from the National Association of Science Writers for Merchants of Immortality, which was also a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the William B. Coley Award in 1998 from the Cancer Research Institute for A Commotion in the Blood. His work has also been widely anthologized, including in Best American Science Writing (2000, 2001, 2008, 2009), A Literary Companion to Science (1990), and The Beholder’s Eye (2005).
Between 1997 and 2000, Hall served as an editor of the New York Times Magazine as well as a Contributing Writer, and has published numerous cover stories for the Magazine. In addition to the New York Times, his journalism has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, New York, Science, The New Yorker, Technology Review, Scientific American, Discover, Smithsonian, and many other national publications. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Orion, and the Hastings Center Report.
In addition to writing, Hall teaches science journalism and explanatory journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and also conducts writing workshops for scientists-in-training at New York University’s Carter Institute of Journalism. His many public appearances include a keynote address at the Keystone Symposium, grand rounds at university medical centers, lectures at the Hastings Center, and readings that have been featured on “Book TV.”
Hall graduated as an honors student in English literature from Beloit College in 1973, and lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and two children.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 17, 2021
A fascinating summary of the East Coast (Harvard)/West Coast (UCSF) and academic (aforementioned universities)/commercial (Genentech) to synthesize an insulin-producing gene in the mid to late 70s, especially in the context of the mRNA vaccine technology that Moderna and Pfizer have developed quite recently.
As one may think of science as an intellectually pure and rigorous discipline, this book does an excellent job combating that notion. Politics influences science with regulation of what experiments it can conduct and its reception by the public; politics within academic circles generate large egos among scientists and combativeness among various labs; business incursions into academic research generated the biotechnology boom that produced such companies as Genentech and Biogen.
As one may think of science as an intellectually pure and rigorous discipline, this book does an excellent job combating that notion. Politics influences science with regulation of what experiments it can conduct and its reception by the public; politics within academic circles generate large egos among scientists and combativeness among various labs; business incursions into academic research generated the biotechnology boom that produced such companies as Genentech and Biogen.
Read
March 6, 2021Almost like a Richard Powers novel, but without much of the shaping force of art. Many characters have to disappear undeveloped because that’s the role they played historically in the scientific pursuit. Hall does, undeniably, make science accessible to the ‘average’ reader. Perhaps what I learned most clearly from reading about cutting edge developments in molecular biology during the late 1970s is a clear understanding of why I went into English.
June 28, 2020
*Invisible Frontiers* is an under appreciated gem of science writing, easily one of the best books I've read about biotechnology. Hall manages to capture the thrill of biological discovery and the human personalities that push at the boundaries of human understanding with a richness and complexity rivaled only in Werth's *The Billion Dollar Molecule*. The book is now out of print, but it is easily one of the best accounts of the early biotechnology revolution and well worth tracking down.
Hall builds his narrative around the efforts to produce synthetic human insulin, but he uses this driving action to tell the larger story of recombinant DNA technology. Beginning with the classic Boyer-Cohen experiment demonstrating that restriction enzymes can be used to insert exogenous DNA into bacterial plasmids for reproduction, Hall weaves the discovery of reverse transcriptase, the invention of Maxam-Gilbert & Sanger sequencing, the early days of DNA synthesis chemistry, and the daily electrophoresis rituals of molecular biology into the plot.
In presenting each of these technologies, Hall adeptly threads the needle by simplifying and clarifying the complex technical details, without being overly reductive. There are few popular science descriptions of my own field that I feel comfortable illuminating in this way.
Hall performed repeated, in-depth interviews with many of the central actors in the early recombinant DNA field, presenting lucid portraits of the scientists involved while refraining from either hagiography or demonization. The real characters in Hall's narrative are neither heroes nor villains, despite their sometimes animus views of one another. Too often in science, even among scientists, the individuals behind the great discoveries that pushed our field forward are reduced to the stories of a few experiments, the author lists on landmark papers. Hall provides each of the players in his story a three-dimensional space to navigate, where they alternatively stumble and inspire.
In these characterizations, Hall is one of but a few popular science writers who properly describes the collaborative, multi-disciplinary nature of modern biology, refusing to reduce the credit for recombinant DNA technology down to a lone genius narrative about a principal investigator who has gone decades without wielding a pipette. One of the most opaque facets of modern life science to the general public is that most work is performed by **trainees** — young, undercompensated individuals working 80+ hour weeks for minimal pay to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. Too often, these trainees are written out of the accolades that follow major discoveries as the popular press shorthands the work of a dozen individuals with the name of the principal investigator responsible for writing the relevant federal grant.
Hall spends as much, if not more time providing these trainees with space to describe their experiences than he provides to the principal investigators of early biotech fame (Boyer, Cohen, Gilbert, Goodman, Rutter). He goes so far as to include long quotes from a student produced parody newspaper out of Walter Gilbert's group, to interview a PhD student pushed out of a relevant project who could easily have been forgotten.
Hall also does an admirable job of apportioning *credit,* a mysteriously and needlessly finite substance akin to gold-standard fiat, **among the players involved. It would have been simple for his account to christen Herb Boyer and Robert Swanson as the true geniuses of the recombinant DNA revolution, but he rejects this oversimplification in favor of extensive accounts of the contributions of postdoctoral fellows within academia and individual scientists in the nascent industry. Ironically, it seems from Hall's account that Boyer & Swanson would be two of the characters most taken with this expansive version of history, most incensed by the counter-factual apotheosis that failed to acknowledge their colleagues.
In this exploration of who deserves accolades, Hall also details the exacting trajectory of careers in American academic science, aptly referring to large R1 institutions as *postdoc mills*. As a UCSF alumni, I am at once somewhat offended by the seeming pejorative but sympathetic to this 10,000 foot view — as has been written by many more intelligent and more experienced than I ([Alberts et. al. 2014, *PNAS*](https://www.pnas.org/content/111/16/5773)), the issues of credit and recognition present in the insulin story arise from systemic issues in the way scientists are trained and (often not) rewarded in the American system. Hall provides a window onto these difficulties for the American public that rarely glimpses the internal machinations of the hyperproductive, hypercompetitive scientific enterprise they fund.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Hall's account did not end with the Genentech press conference announcing the expression of human insulin in *E. coli*. Rather, Hall follows the story further, to the difficulties of manufacturing and distributing therapeutic products Genentech immediately faced. Prior to reading Hall's account, I was unaware that human insulin had few benefits over the porcine variety in production before Humulin, having myself been so taken with the thrill and beauty of the recombinant DNA approach. This latter point is especially useful for highlighting in the minds of young scientists that advances in patient care are often very distant from advances at the bench, that new technologies do not necessarily beget improvements in patient's lives unless they applied judiciously to the most salient, unmet needs.
I found *Invisible Frontiers* to be one of the better books I've read this year, and I recommend it to anyone interested in modern biology of the practice of science.
Hall builds his narrative around the efforts to produce synthetic human insulin, but he uses this driving action to tell the larger story of recombinant DNA technology. Beginning with the classic Boyer-Cohen experiment demonstrating that restriction enzymes can be used to insert exogenous DNA into bacterial plasmids for reproduction, Hall weaves the discovery of reverse transcriptase, the invention of Maxam-Gilbert & Sanger sequencing, the early days of DNA synthesis chemistry, and the daily electrophoresis rituals of molecular biology into the plot.
In presenting each of these technologies, Hall adeptly threads the needle by simplifying and clarifying the complex technical details, without being overly reductive. There are few popular science descriptions of my own field that I feel comfortable illuminating in this way.
Hall performed repeated, in-depth interviews with many of the central actors in the early recombinant DNA field, presenting lucid portraits of the scientists involved while refraining from either hagiography or demonization. The real characters in Hall's narrative are neither heroes nor villains, despite their sometimes animus views of one another. Too often in science, even among scientists, the individuals behind the great discoveries that pushed our field forward are reduced to the stories of a few experiments, the author lists on landmark papers. Hall provides each of the players in his story a three-dimensional space to navigate, where they alternatively stumble and inspire.
In these characterizations, Hall is one of but a few popular science writers who properly describes the collaborative, multi-disciplinary nature of modern biology, refusing to reduce the credit for recombinant DNA technology down to a lone genius narrative about a principal investigator who has gone decades without wielding a pipette. One of the most opaque facets of modern life science to the general public is that most work is performed by **trainees** — young, undercompensated individuals working 80+ hour weeks for minimal pay to expand the boundaries of human knowledge. Too often, these trainees are written out of the accolades that follow major discoveries as the popular press shorthands the work of a dozen individuals with the name of the principal investigator responsible for writing the relevant federal grant.
Hall spends as much, if not more time providing these trainees with space to describe their experiences than he provides to the principal investigators of early biotech fame (Boyer, Cohen, Gilbert, Goodman, Rutter). He goes so far as to include long quotes from a student produced parody newspaper out of Walter Gilbert's group, to interview a PhD student pushed out of a relevant project who could easily have been forgotten.
Hall also does an admirable job of apportioning *credit,* a mysteriously and needlessly finite substance akin to gold-standard fiat, **among the players involved. It would have been simple for his account to christen Herb Boyer and Robert Swanson as the true geniuses of the recombinant DNA revolution, but he rejects this oversimplification in favor of extensive accounts of the contributions of postdoctoral fellows within academia and individual scientists in the nascent industry. Ironically, it seems from Hall's account that Boyer & Swanson would be two of the characters most taken with this expansive version of history, most incensed by the counter-factual apotheosis that failed to acknowledge their colleagues.
In this exploration of who deserves accolades, Hall also details the exacting trajectory of careers in American academic science, aptly referring to large R1 institutions as *postdoc mills*. As a UCSF alumni, I am at once somewhat offended by the seeming pejorative but sympathetic to this 10,000 foot view — as has been written by many more intelligent and more experienced than I ([Alberts et. al. 2014, *PNAS*](https://www.pnas.org/content/111/16/5773)), the issues of credit and recognition present in the insulin story arise from systemic issues in the way scientists are trained and (often not) rewarded in the American system. Hall provides a window onto these difficulties for the American public that rarely glimpses the internal machinations of the hyperproductive, hypercompetitive scientific enterprise they fund.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Hall's account did not end with the Genentech press conference announcing the expression of human insulin in *E. coli*. Rather, Hall follows the story further, to the difficulties of manufacturing and distributing therapeutic products Genentech immediately faced. Prior to reading Hall's account, I was unaware that human insulin had few benefits over the porcine variety in production before Humulin, having myself been so taken with the thrill and beauty of the recombinant DNA approach. This latter point is especially useful for highlighting in the minds of young scientists that advances in patient care are often very distant from advances at the bench, that new technologies do not necessarily beget improvements in patient's lives unless they applied judiciously to the most salient, unmet needs.
I found *Invisible Frontiers* to be one of the better books I've read this year, and I recommend it to anyone interested in modern biology of the practice of science.
July 23, 2024
While the subject matter of this book might seem insufferably dull and/or dense even to the most STEM-enthusiastic readers among us, I was enthralled by this meticulous foray into the frenetic race to synthesize the human gene. Imbuing a distinctive set of vivid characters (real scientists whose seminal contributions and talents helped spur this monumental research innovation) with heroic traits and maintaining a robust accuracy to historical events, author Stephen Hall succeeds in bringing to life a marvelous tale of scientific progress. Given that this book was published decades ago, I wouldn’t be in the least astonished if it garnered traction in the film adaptation realm; the book’s momentous events and breakneck pace suits the dynamic rapidity characteristic of action-packed cinematic feats. Overall, a gripping story of the trials and tribulations that engender groundbreaking discoveries.
November 17, 2025
Invisible Frontiers was interesting because it explains the competition behind creating the first synthetic human gene and shows the pressure scientists went through. It definitely taught me something new about how genetic engineering started. But even though the topic was cool, the book wasn’t really my style. Some parts felt slow and too detailed for me, so overall I gave it 3 stars.
September 24, 2008
This was a 1987 book that you're likely only to find in the library or a used bookshop since its now out of print, but a worthwhile read if you want to see how the biotechnology industry was born. In particular, they look at biosynthetic insulin (now the only variety sold in North America) and how the product offered no patient benefit, but was nevertheless rushed to market. Today, we have evidence this benefited the drug industry with fat profits, but the side-effects of this product are well-documented -- including dangerous side effects like hypoglycemia unawareness which is conveniently blamed on the patient, not the drug. Excellent historical background and useful quotes from those responsible.
October 31, 2007
This is a terrifically readable account of the discovery of recombinant DNA and the birth of biotechnology. I read it when I first started work at Genentech in the 90's - its description of the early history of the company was fascinating. Read it again this summer, and it still holds up. I think the story is so well-told that the book should be of general interest.
February 2, 2008
Tells the story of the race to clone the first human gene, with history behind Genentech and other nobel laureates. I plan to read it again someday now that I've spent several years in the Bay Area biotech industry.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews