A Passion for DNA : Genes, Genomes and Society

ISBN-13: 9780198604280 / Angielski / Miękka / 2001 / 250 str.

James D. Watson

Opis

In 1953, two young, unknown scientists sparked a worldwide revolution. Studying DNA for clues to the nature of genes, James Watson and Francis Crick deduced its molecular composition - two chains twisted into a double helix - and immediately realized that the structure implied how genes were copied and passed from one generation to the next. Their observation has had extraordinary consequences: the discovery of a genetic code that all living things share and the realization that the code translates into proteins; the ability to alter an organism's genetic make-up; recognition that diseases like cancer begin when genes go wrong; the foundations of a biotechnology industry and the means of cloning plants and animals; a start on cataloguing human genes; and the glimmer of a new kind of medicine that uses DNA therapeutically.

Recenzje

Review from previous edition James D. Watson . . . has always been a man of passion and strong views . . . His writings on the important issues of the day, prepared over a period of more than thirty years and presented in the 25 essays of this wonderful book, are only slightly less provocative than his frequently startling spontaneous remarks.

O autorze

James D. Watson was Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, from 1968 to 1993 and is now its President. He was the first Director of the National Center for Humane Genome Research of the National Institutes of Health from 1989 to 1992. With Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. He is the author of the best-selling memoir The Double Helix and the groundbreaking textbook The Molecular Biology of the Gene, and is co-author of Molecular Biology of the Cell and Recombinant DNA: A Short Course. Among many other awards and honors, Dr Watson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.