San Antonio College Library

"In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA. The discovery was a profound, Nobel-Prize-winning moment in the history of genetics, but it did not decipher the messages on the twisted ladderlike strands within our cells. No one knew what the human genome sequence actually was. No one had cracked the code of life. Now, at the beginning of a new millennium, that code has been cracked ... Here for the first time,...

Describes the efforts to construct the complete human genetic code. Also examines moral and political concerns.

As the Human Genome Project completed its mapping of the entire human genome, hopes ran high that we would rapidly be able to use our knowledge of human genes to tackle many inherited diseases, and understand what makes us unique among animals. But things didn't turn out that way ... but the emerging picture is if anything far more exciting. Parrington gives an outline of the deeper genome, involving layers of regulatory elements controlling and coordinating...

Introduction -- Science today -- Molecular biology -- In vitro babies -- Human cloning -- Siamese twins -- Manipulating DNA -- Computers -- The last frontier: the brain -- Ethics and what can go wrong -- The information space.

The human genome, the complete set of genes housed in twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, is nothing less than an autobiography of our species. Spelled out in a billion three-letter words using the four-letter alphabet of DNA, the genome has been edited, abridged, altered and added to as it has been handed down, generation to generation, over more than three billion years. With the first draft of the human genome due to be published in 2000, we, this...

The book examines how sophisticated tools of genetic analysis and manipulation are being developed in laboratories all over the world and considers the impact they will have on issues that scientists consider, including the causes of aging and death, the nature of the brain, and quality of life. Drawing from many research streams-such as advances in molecular and cell biology, imaging, and informatics-genetics is shown to encompass a view of nature...

"John Sulston was director of the Sanger Centre in Cambridge from 1993 to 2000. There he led the British arm of the international team selected to map the entire human DNA sequence, a feat that was pulled off in record time by an extraordinary collaboration of scientists. The ultimate success of the project, after innumerable setbacks and challenges from outside competitors, can be attributed in large part to John Sulston's own determination, passion...

Describes how mapping the human genome has aided paleoanthropologists in their study of ancient bones used to explore human origins, from the earliest humans--bipedal apes--up to Martin Pickford's Millennium Man.

In 2001, scientists were finally able to determine the full human genome sequence, and with the discovery began a genomic voyage back in time. Since then, we have sequenced the full genomes of a number of mankind's primate relatives at a remarkable rate. The genomes of the common chimpanzee (2005) and bonobo (2012), orangutan (2011), gorilla (2012), and macaque monkey (2007) have already been identified, and the determination of other primate genomes...

"Fifty years ago, James D. Watson, then just twenty-four, helped launch the greatest ongoing scientific quest of our time. Now, with unique authority and sweeping vision, he gives us the first full account of the genetic revolution - from Mendel's garden to the double helix to the sequencing of the human genome and beyond." "But genetics as we recognize it today - with its capacity, both thrilling and sobering, to manipulate the very essence of living...