كتاب علمي مختص في علم الجينات البشرية و تطورهاعبر ملايين السنين ، رفد معلومات قيمة و متسلسلة تاريخ الجنس البشري من الناحية العلمية بحسب ما جاءت به سلسة الاكتشافات العلمية المتطورة للجينوم البشري . و الجينوم البشري هو عبارة عن مجموعة الجينات في نواة الخلية قسم الكتاب لثلاث و عشرين فصلاً بحسب عدد الكروسومات الزوجية و ترتيبها بالكروسوم الأكبر حجماً و مسمياً كل نوع منها .

يمتلك الانسان عدد ٢٣ كورسون و هو اقل من عدد كروسومات للقرود الذين يملكون العدد ٢٤ . و من خلال فك شفرات الجينوم ومدى معرفة تاريخها ، يُبين اندماج الكروسوم عدد ٢ و المسمى النوع ، وبمعنى اخر حدوث طفرة وراثية نوعية .

الكتاب صدر بشكل مقالات صحفية ، وأسلوبه بسيط و بإمكان الشخص غير ذي الاختصاص في علوم الأحياء او الوراثة فهمة بشكل يكاد ان يكون شبة كامل . كتب الاختصاص ذات اُسلوب جامد و جاف ومن الصعب على الغير مختصين الخوض في غمار تلك الكتب ،

من الملفت للنظر الخطاء الشائع الذي يتداول على صعيد العموم بتسمية الأمراض بالجينات المسؤلة عنها ، اَي ان سبب مرض س هو احد الجينات ، و هذا الخطا أشبه بتسمية اعضاء الجسم لأمراضها مثل الكبد هو ذلك العضو الذي يصاب بالتلف . ان الجين البشري هو الذي يحمل الشفرة التي تنقل إلينا تاريخ الجنس البشري و الأمراض التي قد تصيبه مستقبلاً . وكما لكل لغة حروفها ، كذلك للجينات حروفها الأربع .

Surprisingly interesting and informative, though somewhat redundant. The idea of structuring chapters around chromosomes and building a story from them is quite interesting, but at times, it veers off track, making the more scientific and informative sections difficult to follow.
Overall interesting especially for someone not deeply familiar with the topic.

النسخة الالكترونية منه ناقصة فقط تناولت اربعة فصول من اصل 23 فصلاً
يجزء الكاتب كتابه الى عدد الكروموسومات الثلاث والعشرين
ويرتبط كل مروموسوم بمعنى فالاول كان الحياة والثاني النوع والثالث التاريخ والرابع المصير...
ويعرض الاكتشافات والامراض وطبيعة الجينات المرتبطه وعلاقتها بالامراض...

اتمنى ان يتوفر كاملاً

The Genome is yet another non-fiction science book that I have read with the utmost fascination. Not that there are that many in the list, but this is a genre that I am absolutely delighting in. It would have been great to have this enthusiasm to know, in school perhaps, when I was rote-learning about DNA and had no idea what the implications of genes were. This book ought to have livened things up in my mind.

The best thing about the book is the lucid structure. It is brilliantly organised, to make non-science people like me understand its content. There are 23 chapters, one for each chromosome. And each chapter discusses a gene from the said chromosome. Sample this, from the first chapter, titled “Life” -
“In the beginning was the word. The word proselytised the sea with its message, copying itself unceasingly and forever. The word discovered how to rearrange chemicals so as to capture little eddies in the stream of entropy and make them live. The word transformed the land surface of the planet from a dusty hell to a verdant paradise. The word eventually blossomed and became sufficiently ingenious to build a porridgy contraption called a human brain that could discover and be aware of the word itself.”

Some points I came to note:
Knowledge is incremental. Understanding of one fact often leads to increased understanding about many other seemingly unrelated topics. For example, Alan Turing’s demonstration that numbers can compute numbers led indirectly (very, very indirectly) to the knowledge that life too, is written in code.
The past is always a useful guide to understanding the present. Whether this is the “recent” past or the “distant” one. The missing link maybe the most famous aspect of human genetics. But it was shocking for me to know that genes from fruit flies can be spliced and replaced by human genetic fragments and there is NO difference in the outcome. We share genes with the fruit fly! That is how distant a past we can analyse and put to good use to understand our own selves. Consider the impressive imagery evoked by this line that says “After all it is less than 300,000 human generations since the common ancestor of both species lived in central Africa. If you held hands with your mother, and she held hands with hers, and she with hers, the line would stretch only from New York to Washington before you were holding hands with the ‘missing link’ - the common ancestor with chimpanzees.”

“The impact of genes on our lives is a gradual, partial, blended sort of thing”. The whole is not a sum of the parts. True. But the parts are critical. If we refuse to acknowledge this we can end up wasting time and resources on the kind of scale that cancer researchers did when they focused their attention on cancer as a whole. The real breakthrough in cancer has in fact, come from the much maligned reductionist approach in science. The breaking up of genes to understand the constituent parts and functions revealed the oncogene - the Why of cancer. Treatment for cancer too is most likely to benefit from further understanding of how genes causing cancer can be approached. "Meanwhile, in one of those ironies which modern biology supplies in abundance, if you have a faulty tumour suppressor gene on chromosome 18, forget gene therapy. A much simpler preventive treatment may be at hand. New research suggests that for those with genes that increase their susceptibility to bowel cancer, a diet rich in aspirin and unripe bananas offers the promise of protection against the cancer. The diagnosis is genetic, but the cure is not. Genetic diagnosis followed by conventional cure is probably the genome's greatest boon to medicine."

The implication of a fact needs to be checked against reality. Coming to conclusions from a certain knowledge is dangerous. For example “the heritability of childhood IQ is about forty-five percent, whereas in late adolescence, it rises to seventy-five per cent. As you grow up, you gradually express your own innate intelligence and leave behind the influences stamped on you by others.” This fact is likely to induce knee jerk conclusions about Nature ruling over Nurture. In reality, “you select the environments that suit your innate tendencies, rather than adjusting your innate tendencies to the environments you find yourself in.” Also, “the heritability of IQ might not be caused by direct ‘genes for intelligence’ at all, but by indirect genes for resistance to toxins or infections - genes in other words, that work by interacting with the environment.” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing indeed. And smug conclusions, truly stupid.

“Sexual relations are driven not by what is good, in evolutionary terms, for what is good for men or for women, but by what is good for their chromosomes. The ability to seduce a woman was good for the y chromosomes in the past; the ability to resist seduction by a man was good for x chromosomes in the past”. This chapter, on chromosomes x and y had me quite astonished. I had never heard of this notion of Interlocus Contest Evolution. By the end of the book, it was one among so many other, equally astonishing facts. Instead of coming to conclusions on any of these, it makes one wonder at what else there is to grasp, to know,and what among them may be put to good use.


“The man who first set in train the ideas that led to sexual antagonism, Bill Hamilton, understood how profoundly it shook our notions of what genes are…”
He wrote:
“My own conscious and seemingly indivisible self was turning out far from what I had imagined and I need not be so ashamed of my self-pity! I was an ambassador ordered abroad by some fragile coalition, a bearer of conflicting orders from the uneasy masters of a divided empire…..As I write these words, even so as to be able to write them, I am pretending to a unity that, deep inside myself, I now know does not exist. I am fundamentally mixed, male with female, parent with offspring, warring segments of chromosomes that interlocked in strife millions of years before the River Severn ever saw the Celts and Saxons of Housman’s poem( A Shropshire Lad).”

The writer makes an appeal to inform oneself about the benefits that have accrued from science and to stop the fear mongering that is based on wilful ignorance and refusal to read up. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan gives the example of the destruction of the library at Alexandria and the ensuing thousand plus years of ignorance and cruelty as an indication of how dangerous turns can take place in the history of humanity. From the astounding knowledge base developed by the Greeks, mankind went backwards to devoting lives to their respective invisible friends. The two major desert cults spawned violence and ignorance for centuries till the Renaissance. Here in India, one guy draped a thread around his torso, declared himself and his progeny “highborn” and rendered millions to servitude to an invention called caste. Knowledge, post the Zero, was stillborn. No lessons are learnt yet. One can only hope.

The book might be slightly out of date but that's the only negative thing I can say about it. The amount of information and perspective I gained from this book truly surprised me. Highly recommended.

An amazing book. Ridley writes in an easy-to-comprehend style and uses the 23 human chromosomes as a means to structure the book. Each chapter deals with a specific theme within genetics and is in most cases only superficially tied to 'the' current chromosome.

Throughout the book Ridley deals with such themes as heritable diseases, the arms races between viruses and cells, the nature vs. nurture debate, sexual (genetic) conflict, human instincts, eugenics and free will. The subtitle of the book "An autobiography of our species in 23 chapters" is a little bit too enthousiastic, but it proved to be a comprehensive and lucid oversight of the field of genetics.

Prior to reading Genome, I had already read a lot about biology, genetics and psychology. This book helped me to put all these different pieces of knowledge in the right perspective. As a bonus, it gave me some new insights as well. (For example, the impact of the international eugenics movement in the 20's en 30's of the last century and the strange workings of the prion diseases CJD and BSE).

Awesome content, but knocking it down a star because of the writing style. At some points the author made very detailed statements that assumed prior context that this reader, at least, did not have. Also, he had a tendency to anthropomorphize our genes, talking about their "wants" and "desires" which I found counter-productive to understanding how they operate.

Рядко препрочитам книги. Но тази съм чела три пъти. Може би е свързано с увлечението ми към темата за гените и генното инженерство, но наистина книгата ми хареса изключително много. Но дори и да не беше то, съм сигурна, че щях да я обожавам. Пълна е с интересни факти от темата за усвояването на прясното мляко до различните вируси и техните мутации. Информацията е представена едновременно научно, подробно и увлекателно. Май скоро ще я прочета отново :)

This was an interesting and understandable survey of human genetic heritage. There were a few boring pieces that recounted things I'd been taught repeatedly in biology classes - I can see the utility of this as not all readers would have taken those classes, I just didn't enjoy reading about those things again as much as I enjoyed the more specific examples. The last few chapters contained some biased language (calling people who tore up GM crops "eco-terrorists" rather than simply "vandals," for example, is using a contested definition of terrorism) and drew some political conclusions that, whether I agreed with them or not (and there were some of each) neither fit well with the reasonably objective structure established by the preceding chapters nor were especially well defended.

Despite these problems, though, this made me want to find out more about advances in genetic research since it was published. The biggest problem I had with this book, and the reason I'd hesitate to recommend it, is that it's more than a decade out of date. It was worth reading to find out some interesting historical facts, but if I was choosing one book to read about genetics I'd pick something published more recently.

إنتهيت من قراءة أمتع كتاب علمى قرأته حتى الآن... كــ قارئة قبل ان اكون باحثة فى المجال العلمى تطرقت لقراءات متعددة وبأساليب مختلفة عن الجينوم وفى الغالب كنت اجدها تحمل الطابع العلمى البحت الجاف نوعاً ما وبالرغم من استعدادى للمعرفة الا اننى كنت اصاب بالملل ولابد من القراءة على فترات متقطعة .... لكن ان أقرأ كتاب علمى عن الجينوم تفوق صفحاته 400 صفحة وكأنى أقرأ رواية جذابة تأخذنى كل كلمة فيها ... قطعاً انه مات ريدلى القدير فى استعراض موضوع هام كهذا عن الجينوم او المادة الوراثية بإسلوب روائى رائع بدأً من العنوان "الجينوم قصة حياة الجنس البشرى او السيرة الذاتية للنوع البشرى فى ثلاثة وعشرين فصل".... اما فهرس الكتاب انه رائع فعلاً فالفصل يعنى الكروموسوم "الفصل الاول اى الكرموسوم الاول ك1:الحياة - ك2: النوع - ك3: التاريخ - ك4: المصير - ك5: البيئة - ك6 : الذكاء - ك7: الغريزة - ك8: الصراع - ك9: الاهتمام بالذات - ك10: المرض - ك11: التوتر - ك12: الشخصية - ك13: تجميع الذات - ك14: ما قبل التاريخ - ك15: الخلود - ك16: الجنس - ك17: الذاكرة - ك18: الموت - ك19: العلاج - ك20: الوقاية - ك21: السياسة - ك22: تحسين النسل - ك23: الارادة الحرة" .... اما مقدمة الكتاب فهى معبرة جداً عن حقيقة الموضوع

الجينوم كتاب يحتوى على 23 فصلاً تسمى كروموسومات كل فصل به عدة الآف من المقالات وهى الجينات كل مقالة مؤلفة من فقرات هى الاكسونات تتخللها فقرات إعلانية تسمى الانترونات وكل فقرة مؤلفة من مجموعة من الكلمات تسمى كودونات كل كلمة مكتوبة بحروف تسمى القواعد

انه كتاب ضخم مفرط فى الطول وكلها داخل النواه الميكروسكوبية الحجم الموجوده بخلية دقيقة اصغر حجماً من رأس الدبوس

انه الكتاب الوحيد الذى يقرأ من اليسار لليمين وفى نفس الوقت من اليمين لليسار وهذا لا يحدث مع اى كتاب بأى لغة اى كانت

انه الكتاب الوحيد المكون من اربعة حروف فقط يكتب بها مليار كلمة هى المكونة للجينوم وهذه الحروف هى

(A - C - G - T)
اى: أدينين - سايتوسين - جوانين - ثايمين

(DNA) تكتب فى سلاسل طويلة من السكر والفوسفات هى جزيئات الحمض النووى الريبى
التى ترتبط بها القواعد كدرجات سلم حيث ان الكروموسوم هو زوج طويل من جزيئات
DNA

انه الكتاب الوحيد الذى ينسخ نفسه (التضاعف) ويقرأ نفسه (الترجمة).... سبحان الله

اعجبنى الكتاب جداً ولم اعطى النجمة الخامسة لانى لا أعتقد فى نظرية التطور لــ داروين التى تأثر بها المؤلف كثيراً خلال هذا الكتاب

ان هذا الصنع واليد التى خطت هذا الكتاب الذى تحدث عنه ريدلى وتحدث عنه كل المهتمين بالعلم ومازالوا يكتشفوا عنه وعن غيره المزيد انها يد الله الخالق عزوجل القادر على ان يضع لكل كائن حى بصمة وراثية تختلف عن غيره فهذه معجزة من معجزات الله التى لا تعد ولا تحصى ... ليس كمثله شيئ وهو السميع العليم

[30 September 2019]
I really enjoyed this book, and appreciated it, because it explained basic genetics better than anything else I've ever read. Of course I haven't read Siddhartha Mukherjee's book, but I still suspect this book is better for the genetic novice. Of course, it's 20 years old, but most of what it covers is probably still true.

Some readers might object to how much he injects his personal opinions into the text, but I liked it. And I felt it was usually clear that it was his personal opinion. Another thing a little odd was the number of off topic digressions, often coupled with personal observations. But I mostly liked those too. The last chapter got a bit into the weeds, discussing the apparent controversy over "free will". He disagrees with the common positions that there is no free will because your actions are either dictated entirely by your genome or your actions are entirely random. Ridley does not accept that dichotomy, saying that neither of those control absolutely and free will resides in the interaction between those two extremes. That makes a lot of sense to me.

I do wish there was a way to get an updated and annotated edition. One specific item he mentions is a study that found heart disease is not a function of diet or exercise as much as it is of stress, and particularly the stress related to your status or lack there of. I'd never heard of that. The medical community certainly is still concentrating on diet and exercise. So I wonder if that study is still considered valid.

The book is short and easy to read. The writing style is relaxed and doesn't get too bogged down in scientific detail for the lay reader. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Genetics is potentially the most important field of science today. But this potential needs to be explored carefully. The book explores some of that potential, and also highlights the moral, legal and political challenges that we have to tackle. The subject matter is heavy, but yet miraculously the text feels like walking on clouds. This is one of those dazzlingly entertaining pop-sci books.

As the author readily admits, any book on a rapidly advancing science such as genetics would need constant updating in order to stay up to date. For a book written nearly two decades ago (as of 2017), the book still feels relatively fresh. However, a lot of things have happened since then, most notably success at mapping the human genome, novel advances in epigenetics, novel advances in genetic screening and gene therapies, and most recently, the development of CRISPR gene editing techniques.

The book is divided into chapters so that each chapter tells a specific story that tangentially ties to a specific chromosome. This way, the author can crisscross between history and contemporary science, with excursions into philosophy and legal theory. Some of the more haunting chapters deal with difficult congenital diseases, eugenics, human personality, gender differences and politics.

One of the biggest takeaways from the book, for me, was the insight that many of the moral dilemmas that the application of genetics into practical life raises are not a matter of "science versus individual freedom," but, as always, government regulation versus individual freedom. The follies of eugenics were, predictably, the fault of social planners gone awry. The forcible sterilization of criminals and the mentally handicapped was not the fault of genetics, but the fault of toxic political philosophy that put the collective morality of the nation over the individual.

We should stay on the lookout for abuses of science in politics. But the much bigger problem is the underdevelopment of science due to a stifling atmosphere of over-regulation! Even today, there is way too much regulation of the fields of science and medicine in general, and, in particular, in the potentially revolutionary field of genetically (re)engineering our own genome. It boggles the mind that human cloning is still such a taboo, even though it's nobody's business to ban. We need to allow individuals to redesign themselves as they see fit, in order to pursue their own happiness.

As the author reminds us: "Your genome is your own, and you should never forget that."