Dna: The Secret of Life

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by Watson, James


  Watson, James D., Michael Gilman, Jan Witkowski, and Mark Zoller. Recombinant DNA. New York: Scientific American Books, distributed by W. H. Freeman, 1992. Now out of date but still a sound introduction to the basic science underlying genetic engineering.

  Watson, James D., and John Tooze. The DNA Story: A Documentary History of Gene Cloning. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1981. The recombinant DNA debate recounted through contemporary articles and documents.

  CHAPTER 5: DNA, DOLLARS, AND DRUGS

  Cooke, Robert. Dr. Folkman's War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer. New York: Random House, 2001.

  Hall, Stephen S. Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987. Tells the insulin-cloning story with verve.

  Kornberg, Arthur. The Golden Helix: Inside Biotech Ventures. Sausalito, Calif.: University Science Books, 1995. The founder of several companies describes the rise of the biotechnology industry.

  Werth, Barry. The Billion-Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug. New York: Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster, 1995. The story of Vertex, a company typifying the biotech approach to the pharmaceutical business.

  CHAPTER 6: TEMPEST IN A CEREAL BOX

  Charles, Daniel. Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2001. Fascinating account of the genetically modified food controversy, emphasizing the business side and focusing primarily on Monsanto.

  McHughen, Alan. Pandora's Picnic Basket: The Potential and Hazards of Genetically Modified Foods. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Spotty introduction to some of the issues, including scientific ones, behind the controversy.

  CHAPTER 7: THE HUMAN GENOME

  Cook-Deegan, Robert M. The Gene Wars: Science, Politics, and the Human Genome. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994. Brilliantly comprehensive account of the origins and early days of the Human Genome Project.

  Davies, Kevin. Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA. New York: Free Press, 2001. Continuation of Cook-Deegan's story, bringing it up to the completion of the first draft of the human genome.

  Sulston, John, and Georgina Ferry. The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2002. Personal account of research on the worm and of the British end of the Human Genome Project. Sulston's disdain for individuals and companies profiting from the human genome sequence drives his story and his science.

  CHAPTER 8: READING GENOMES

  Bier, Ethan. The Coiled Spring: How Life Begins. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2000.

  Comfort, Nathaniel C. The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. A scholarly but approachable account of the life and work of Barbara McClintock.

  Lawrence, Peter A. The Making of a Fly: The Genetics of Animal Design. Boston: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1992. Now out of date but still an excellent introduction to the excitement generated when genetics meets developmental biology.

  Ridley, Matt. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. Hugely accessible introduction to modern studies of human genetics.

  CHAPTER 9: OUT OF AFRICA

  Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (Luigi Luca). Genes, Peoples, and Languages. Translated by Mark Seielstad. New York: North Point Press, 2000. Personal account of human-evolution studies by the field's leader.

  Olson, Steve. Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Balanced and up-to-date account of human evolution and the impact that our past has on our present.

  Sykes, Bryan. The Seven Daughters of Eve. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001.

  CHAPTER 10: GENETIC FINGERPRINTING

  Massie, Robert K. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. New York: Random House, 1995. The story of the Romanovs' murders and of how DNA fingerprinting established the authenticity of the remains and unmasked impostors.

  Scheck, Barry, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer. Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted. New York: Doubleday, 2000. From the horses' mouths, an examination of the power of DNA fingerprinting to exonerate the wrongfully convicted.

  Wambaugh, Joseph. The Blooding. New York: Bantam Books, 1989. Exciting account of the first use of DNA fingerprinting to apprehend a criminal.

  CHAPTER 11: GENE HUNTING

  Bishop, Jerry E., and Michael Waldholz. Genome: The Story of the Most Astonishing Scientific Adventure of Our Time – The Attempt to Map All the Genes in the Human Body. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Still one of the best accounts of the early days of hunting human disease genes.

  Gelehrter, Thomas D., Francis Collins, and David Ginsburg. Principles of Medical Genetics. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1998. A short and readable textbook on modern human molecular genetics.

  Pollen, Daniel A. Hannah's Heirs: The Quest for the Genetic Origins of Alzheimer's Disease. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Captures the thrill of the chase and highlights the awfulness of the disease.

  Wexler, Alice. Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research. New York: Random House, 1995. Searingly honest testimony from Nancy Wexler's sister.

  CHAPTER 12: DEFYING DISEASE

  Davies, Kevin, with Michael White. Breakthrough: The Race to Find the Breast Cancer Gene. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1996. Story of immensely hard work, dedication, ambition, and greed.

  Kitcher, Philip. The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Philosophical and ethical discussion about how to use what we have learned of human molecular genetics.

  Lyon, Jeff, with Peter Gorner. Altered Fates: Gene Therapy and the Retooling of Human Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995. Includes a good account of the treatment of the two girls with ADA deficiency.

  Reilly, Philip R. Abraham Lincoln's DNA and Other Adventures in Genetics. Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2000. Essays on topical issues written from the unusually informed perspective of a physician-cum-lawyer.

  Thompson, Larry. Correcting the Code: Inventing the Genetic Cure for the Human Body. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Account of the development of gene therapy, including the Martin Cline episode.

  CHAPTER 13: WHO WE ARE

  Coppinger, Raymond, and Lorna Coppinger. Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution. New York: Scribner, 2001. Overview of the enormous differences, in body and mind, among dogs.

  Crick, Francis H. C. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul New York: Scribner, 1993. A materialist perspective on the problem of consciousness. Crick concludes that we are "no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

  Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press, 1994. More talked about than read.

  Jacoby, Russell, and Naomi Glauberman, ed. The Bell Curve Debate: History, Documents, Opinions. New York: Times Books, 1995. Collection of eighty essays about and reviews of The Bell Curve.

  Lewontin, R. C, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin. Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. The academic left's response to Wilson's Sociobiology.

  Mendvedev, Zhores A. The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Firsthand account by a scientist who suffered from the Communist Party's control of Soviet science.

  Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking Penguin, 2002.

  Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Evolutionary psychology outlined by one its most eloquent proponents.

  Ridley, Matt. Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human. New Yo
rk: HarperCollins, 2003.

  Soyfer, Valery N. Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science. Translated by Leo Gruliow and Rebecca Gruliow. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. An account from someone who knew Lysenko.

  Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975. Proposes an evolutionary explanation for much of our behavior.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is one of several strands that together comprise a major effort to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the double helix. All of the projects – this book, a five-part TV series, a multimedia educational product, and a short film for science museum audiences – are interconnected in many ways. We therefore find ourselves indebted to more than the usual slew of readers, editors, and spouses found in the acknowledgments section of a typical nonfiction book. What follows is a reflection of the size and scope of a sprawling collaborative project.

  Throughout, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the University of North Carolina have been phenomenally generous in their support. With wisdom and good sense, John Cleary and John Maroney oversaw the project's alarmingly complex logistics, ensuring that its many strands never became unraveled.

  The television series was produced by David Dugan of Windfall Productions in London under the direction of David Glover and Carlo Masarella. To create the educational components, Max Whitby of the Red Green & Blue Company, also in London, collaborated with a team under Dave Micklos at the Cold Spring Harbor Dolan DNA Learning Center and with genius animator Drew Berry (no relation) at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

  The illustrations for the book were prepared by Keith Roberts of the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England. With his customary flair for combining design with scientific clarity, Keith has, with Nigel Orme, produced a series of illustrations that we feel massively enhance the value of the book. Robin Reardon, the assistant editor at Knopf, managed against all odds to coax us into making deadline after deadline (well, more or less) without once having to resort to physical intimidation. Designer Peter Andersen, also at Knopf, effected the miraculous marriage between the text and the images. Keith, Robin, and Peter were indispensable members of the team.

  Many people read versions of the book or of chapters addressing their particular areas of expertise. The following graciously supplied detailed and insightful comments on the manuscript: Fred Ausubel, Paul Berg, David Botstein, Stanley Cohen, Francis Collins, Jonathan Eisen, Mike Hammer, Doug Hanahan, Rob Horsch, Sir Alec Jeffreys, Mary-Claire King, Eric Lander, Phil Leder, Victor McElheny, Svante Pääbo, Joe Sambrook, and Nancy Wexler.

  Many others also supplied helpful information and/or images: Bruce Ames, Jay Aronson, Antonio Barbadilla, John Barranger, Jacqueline Barataud, Caroline Berry, Sam Berry, Ewan Birney, Richard Bondi, Herb Boyer, Pat Brown, Clare Bunce, Caroline Caskey, Tom Caskey, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Shirley Chan, Francis A. Chifari, Kenneth Culver, Charles DeLisi, John Doebley, Helen Donis-Keller, Cat Eberstark, Mike Fletcher, Judah Folkman, Norm Gahn, Wally Gilbert, Janice Goldblum, Eric Green, Wayne Grody, Mike Hammer, Krista Ingram, Leemor Joshua-Tor, Linda Pauling Kamb, David King, Robert Koenig, Teresa Kruger, Brenda Maddox, Tom Maniatis, Richard McCombie, Benno Müller-Hill, Tim Mulligan, Kary Mullis, Harry Noller, Peter Neufeld, Margaret Nance Pierce, Naomi Pierce, Tomi Pierce, Daniel Pollen, Mila Pollock, Sue Richards, Tim Reynolds, Matt Ridley, Julie Reza, Barry Scheck, Mark Seielstad, Phil Sharp, David Spector, Rick Stafford, Debbie Stevenson, Bronwyn Terrill, William C. Thompson, Lap-Chee Tsui, Peter Underhill, Elizabeth Watson, Diana Wellesley, Rick Wilson, David Witt, Jennifer Whiting, James Wyngaarden, Larry Young, Norton Zinder.

  Thank you all.

  All the above did their best to ensure that we got things right. Nevertheless we are wholly responsible for the errors that no doubt remain.

  INDEX

  Entries referring to key terms or concepts in the text are set in bold.

  abortion

  spontaneous

  Abraham

  Actual Innocence (Scheck and Neufeld)

  adenine (A)

  adenine-thymine base pair

  adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA)

  Affymetrix (co.)

  Africa

  human family tree rooted in

  move out of

  African Americans

  Africans

  aging

  agriculture

  genetic engineering

  genetically modified

  revolution

  Soviet Union

  technology

  Agrobacterium tumefaciens

  α-helix (alpha helix)

  AIDS

  Alberts, Bruce

  albinism

  Alexandra, Tsarina

  alkaptonuria

  allergens

  Alpher, Ralph

  ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease)

  alternative splicing

  Altman, Sidney

  Alu

  Alzheimer, Alois

  Alzheimer disease

  Amerindians

  see also Native Americans

  Ames, Bruce

  Ames test

  Amgen (co.)

  amino acids

  and adaptor molecules

  alphabet

  bound to RNA molecules

  chains

  DNA bases specifying

  linking in proteins

  order of

  plants low in

  protein synthesis

  sequences

  Amish

  amniocentesis

  Ancestral File

  ancient DNA

  Anderson, Anna

  Anderson, French

  angiogenesis

  angiostatin

  antennapedia

  anthrax

  anthropologists

  anthropology

  antibiotics

  antibody(ies)

  monoclonal

  antisocial behavior

  apolipoprotein E (APOE)

  APOEε4 allele

  Applied Biosystems, Inc. (ABI) (co.)

  Arber, Werner

  artificial selection

  Ashkenazim

  Asilomar conference

  asthma

  automated sequencing

 

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