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The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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Krishna said: " Siddhartha Mukherjee has done the impossible in this book--taken an arcane and highly complex subject matter, and made it interesting, even entertaining to read, so much so that I found myself wanting to read one more chapter to find out what happens Siddhartha Mukherjee has done the impossible in this book--taken an arcane and highly complex subject matter, and made it interesting, even entertaining to read, so much so that I found myself wanting to read one more chapter to find out what happens next. The story of the human exploration of the gene is brought alive in the fashion of a detective story. The solution of each question reveals further mysteries, that new generations of scientists solve only to reveal further enigmas and puzzles.

Curiosity about one's heritage and family history is natural for human beings, and speculations about how children inherit the features of parents are common. Pythagoras argued that male semen traveled through the body collecting sense impressions (vapors) of all human organs, and this information was conveyed to the female womb, and reproduced. But problems abounded with this theory -- if male sperm are the only vehicles for information, how come children can resemble mothers, how can sperm can collect information for female organs? Aristotle countered that maybe information was available from both parents. For the 16th century, Paracelsus speculated that a miniature human lived inside the sperm, and grew to baby-size in the womb, and in turn carried even smaller homunculi inside its sperm, a view attractive to the medieval church fathers since it meant that an unbroken chain of homunculi stretched all the way back to Adam, like nested Russian dolls, and partook of original sin.

But the modern interest in heredity was catalyzed in the 19th century by two giants, Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin. But Darwin's theory of natural selection presented a challenge to heredity: it had to simultaneously explain how parental characteristics were inherited, and yet in some cases there are variations (mutations) on which selective pressures could act, resulting in the eventual origin of new species. In other words, it called for continuity AND change. Another puzzle was why the mixing of characteristics from two parents did not lead to the blurring of all distinctions -- if a blue eyed dad and a brown eyed mom produced offspring, why would not the child have slushy brown eyes. And how can traits skip a generation and reappear intact. Gregor Mendel's painstaking experiments with pea plants identified that traits are transferred as whole units without mixing, and put forward the idea of dominant and recessive traits. But Mendel's scientific article appearing in an obscure journal was forgotten for close to 50 years until William Bateson ("Mendel's bulldog") popularized it in the late 19th century. ...more "

Jan 02, 2017 09:56AM · see review