Author: Kevin Davies
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 310
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143027654
Description
Told in riveting detail, this book takes the reader into the labs and lives of researchers and scientists and also explores the profound implications of a discovery that will revolutionize all our lives.
In the mid-1980s, a group of scientists began to formulate a plan to assemble the complete sequence of all 3 billion letters of human DNA. After years of argument about the cost and wisdom of a quest to systematically sequence our genetic makeup, the Human Genome Project finally got under way in 1990, with 2005 as the scheduled year of completion.
When the project was launched as a joint venture between the US and UK governments in 1990, it was inconceivable that anyone else would have the technology, the expertise or the financial resources to even enter the race, let alone win it. In 1998, however, the brash scientist, millionaire and world-class yachtsman J. Craig Venter announced that his company, Celera, would use high-powered sequencing machines to complete the sequence from scratch, in three years.
Going beyond the headlines and the newsprint, ‘The Sequence’ tells the compelling story of the race between the official government-sponsored project led by the brilliant geneticist Francis Collins, and the renegade biotech company founded by Venter. Venter’s aim was to be able to patent hundreds of genes and sell precious information about the genome sequence to the pharmaceutical industry, for a fortune. Collins’s brief was to speed up an unwieldy federal program to deliver the complete sequence years earlier than projected, all the while releasing its DNA data every night to make the human genome unpatentable. And to keep pace with Venter.
The in riveting detail this book takes the reader into the labs and lives of researchers and scientists like these, who last year made arguably the biggest scientific breakthrough of all time. Regardless of who the history books eventually decide ‘won’ the race, the stakes are staggeringly high. From the fertility clinics, where embryos are screened for disease genes before implantation, to the courtroom, where the right to patent and use genetic information will be fought, ‘The Sequence’ explores the profound implications of a discovery that will revolutionize all our lives.
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction
ONE
Knights of the Double Helix : The Quest for Biology’s Holy Grail
TWO
Reading the Book of Life : A Quick Voyage Around the Human Genome
THREE
The Eye of the Tiger
J Craig Venter-Maverick Sequencer
FOUR
Loading the Bases
Francis Collins and the DNA Detectives
FIVE
The Circle of Life : Decoding the First Free-Living Creatures
SIX
Treasures of the Lost Worlds : The Keys to Human Disease from Tristan da Gunha to Iceland
SEVEN
Prize Fight : The Creation of Celera Genomics
EIGHT
The Story of US : The Secrets of Who We Are
NINE
The Croesus Code : Passion, Personality, and Profit
TEN
The Eighth Day : Braving the new World of Designer Genes
ELEVEN
The Language of God : A Defining Moment in the History of the Human Race
Notes
Acknowledgements
Index