I listened to this book on audio and absolutely loved it! The narration was great and the story itself was fascinating. I've been recommending this book to people because I enjoyed it that much, despite that fact that it has been out for a number of years now.

كتاب فلسفي عن تاريخ معارك إكتشاف DNA البشري بين الحكومات والقطاع الخاص
يسهب الكاتب بطريقه فجة ومملة ف احداث غير ذات صلة بالموضوع الاصلي
لايقرأ بتمعن ولكن قراءة سريعه

I read this for my genomics class via audiobook. Not sure if the book would have kept my attention

Super well-written and engaging.

Science at it's best and worst.

Very nice read. Describes the often tumultuous political scene that underlay the Human Genome Sequencing project.

Originally the Human Genome project was publicly funded, and included many of the brightest human geneticists in the world. In addition to being brilliant scientists, this group contained some fascinating personalities. The author does an excellent job of conveying these often extreme personalities and setting the scene for what would eventually escalate into the scientific equivalent of all out nuclear war.

The story really gets interesting when a rogue geneticist name J. Craig Venter decides to leave the public consortium and join a corporate venture with the intention of beating the public scientists to the prize. Most of the book tracks Venter and story. He is a fascinatingly conflicted character, equal parts megalomaniac and saint.

The book delves into the science in an approachable manner. This is pretty interesting in its own right, but the real story is the brinksmanship between the public and private sequencing groups.

Overall if you are interested in learning about human genomics and like a battle of the titans plot line this is the book for you

I have no idea what other people would think about this book. I liked getting the backstory about the projects that laid the groundwork for my career. I am still trying to decide if I would want to work with Craig if ever given the he chance. He seems intense and somewhat unhinged but also a creative genius that doesn't let details and reality slow him down.

Less interesting than expected. However, I did enjoy learning about what was going on in the 1990s. That was when I was eagerly following each journal article about microbe DNA that was sequenced, and when I thought TIGR would be such a cool place to work. Reading about all the politics and drama that was going on during that time was quite enjoyable.

[3.5 stars]
The Human Genome Project is remembered today as a noble and highly collaborative effort, but people seem to forget that biotech maverick Craig Venter literally founded a company with the goal of doing the same thing as the public Project, but faster. This conflict is what gives The Genome War its name. In telling this story, James Shreeve spun quite an interesting yarn but largely avoided considering any of its implications. Since I hope to do some of this very analysis myself I suppose I should be happy, but it was nonetheless strange to see Shreeve neglect even basic questions about the historical significance of the Project. The Genome War provides a good accounting of events but not much more.

حرب الجينوم ، قصة السباق الأكثر إثارة في تاريخ العلوم الحديثة، سباق بين عالم الأعمال الخاصة متمثلة في شركة سيليرا و مؤسسها ڤينتر و بين الحكومة الأمريكية نحو تجميع الخريطة الكاملة للجينوم البشري، اعتمد كل منهما على طريقة و كان تحدي سيليرا "اسم لاتيني يدل على السرعة" أن تكمل أبحاثها في غضون ثلاث سنوات أي قبل البرنامج الحكومي بكثير و ذلك من أجل السبق العلمي إلى هذا الاكتشاف الذي سيفتح آفاقا لا متناهية في عالم الطب و الأدوية و كذلك بل و أساسا من أجل الربح لأنها و قبل أن تكون مركزا الأبحاث و صياغة البرامج شركة لها زبائنها و تنتظر عائدات و نتائج استثماراتها العملاقة.
القصة أيضا قصة طموح رجل لم يكن يحترم آراءه أحد في المجتمع العلمي، لكن سعيه وراء أحلامه قاد البشرية نحو أفق أفضل...

The decoding of the entire human DNA has been rightly considered the most important scientific achievement of the start of end of twentieth and the beginning of twenty-first century. The Human Genome, as the complete DNA information is know, is a vast, complicated information resource that is essentially a digital instruction book on how to build a human organism. The promise for all of human biology in understanding such an important repository of information is enormous. It has the potential to completely and irrevocably alter how biology and medicine are done. Ever since the epochal discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick, we had understood that genes are nothing else but the long strands of DNA molecule that code for particular proteins. At the same time the sheer size of the entire genome became obvious, and it seemed like it will be at least another century before we are able to decode it in its entirety. However, with passing of years our technology became ever more sophisticated and it started to look increasingly plausible that the decoding of the whole genome of single species was within the reach. Slowly a consortium of government-funded and academic labs started to form, with their eyes on the most important genome of them all: that of Homo Sapiens. However, in the late nineteen-nineties a powerful challenge to the government's project was launched from the private sector. Led by Craig Venter, "Celera Genomics" promised to map the entire human genome much faster than the government-sponsored consortium could, and presumably for a much more affordable price - it would certainly cost nothing to the taxpayers. Instead of buckling down, the government project decided to redouble its own effort and as a consequence the race for the primacy was born.

This book tells us about that race. It is primarily written from the point of view of Craig Venter, one of the most unique and controversial living scientists. He truly has really lead a very unusual scientific career, and had he achieved far less than the success with mapping the human genome it would have been still worthwhile to read his story. The narrative in this book is very compelling, and we get a lot of detail in how scientists go about their business, what it takes to assemble a World-class team for an enormously complex project, and how personal interactions and healthy egos make the actual path to scientific discovery much more messy than we would have otherwise thought. In real world there are no true dispassionate searchers for truth - ambition and all other basic human motivators are present and important. This book does a really good job of exposing these considerations and waving them all together in an enjoyable and readable story.

Really 4.25

The author follows J Craig Venter, who is a scientist/entrepeneur who is a little full of himself. His company declares that it will map the whole human genome---but at the same time, there is a HUGE effort funded by the feds to do exactly that. Venter claims that his method will go much faster, and so the academics should just stop and do something else instead. Yeah, that goes over well. But the author is granted access from this beginning point. Well, to the company's doings, so we get a much better sense of what's going on there than in the "competing" version. And it is a competition. Boy howdy.

The real problem with this book is the incredible egos of the scientists involved---they're really quite unpleasant to spend time with. In the end, both efforts sort of stop before it's really done; what a waste. I mean *something* gets done, but not really what could have happened, had they been more willing/able to work together. But everyone wants to be first. To make history or whatever. Sigh.

The author does a good job of explaining the science (or at least good enough for me).

There's this weird dilemma, especially for Venter's company, between publishing everything they find, and patenting things (well, genes) so they can make money off them. It's never *completely* clear which Venter wants to do, or what he'd be allowed to do. And all the compromises necessary to move forward leave nobody happy.

How could anyone have ever believed that patenting genes was legit?