Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

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Ridley delves into other contentious political topics as well, such as media hysteria over Mad Cow Disease, eugenics, genetic screening, sex, evolutionary psychology, and luddism. Ridley has a unique, but extremely compelling views on all these topics, and that's where this book really shines. One of the points Ridley quite clearly makes in a couple of places is that your genes belong to you alone, and you alone have the right to decide who you want to share it with. However, you really have to wait for the last few chapters of the book for his to really get started.

The evidence from zoology has always pointed that way: male behaviour is systematically different from female behaviour in most species and the difference has an innate component. The brain is an organ with innate gender. Chromosome 16 – Memory Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will. Chromosome 6 – Intelligence

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It is a rather basic, chemical—mechanical, step-by-step process. From simple asymmetry can grow intricate pattern. The very combination that is most beneficial in your generation guarantees you some susceptible children. Never ending genetic diversity of blood types

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters is a 1999 popular science book by the science writer Matt Ridley, published by Fourth Estate. The chapters are numbered for the pairs of human chromosomes, one pair being the X and Y sex chromosomes, so the numbering goes up to 22 with Chapter X and Y couched between Chapters 7 and 8. The most important lesson from the book is repeated over and over again, "Genes are not there to cause diseases." Gene mutations can lead to disease, and sometimes there is a balancing effect between resistance to one disease at the expense of being susceptible to another disease.For a thorough review of the subject see the article The Enemies within: Intergenomic Conflict, Interlocus Contest Evolution (ICE), and the Intraspecific Red Queen by Rice and Holland (1997). ↩ Down-syndrome babies are generally born to older mothers. The probability of having a Down-syndrome baby grows rapidly and exponentially as the age of the mother increases, from 1 in 2,300 at the age of twenty to 1 in 100 at forty. Chromosome 22 – Free Will It might be possible to prevent or cure Alzheimer's disease and coronary heart disease. APO genes like APOE influence fat and cholesterol metabolism. The E4 allele of EPOE contributes to the plaque buildup of Alzheimer's. Genetic testing may help patients take early preventative action.

Thus when a sea slug habituates to a false alarm, the synapse between the receiving, sensory neuron and the neuron that moves the gill is somehow weakened. Genome has been reviewed in scientific journals including Nature [1] and in medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, where Robert Schwartz notes that Ridley speculates, "sometimes wildly". [7] The book is a "gambol" through the human chromosomes. All the same, Schwartz writes, the book is "instructive, challenging, and fun to read. I envy Ridley's talent for presenting, without condescension, complex sets of facts and ideas in terms comprehensible to outsiders." [7]The idea of genes in conflict with each other, the notion of the genome as a sort of battlefield between parental genes and childhood genes, or between male genes and female genes, is a little-known story outside a small group of evolutionary biologists. Yet it has profoundly shaken the philosophical foundations of biology. Chromosome 9 – Disease Lee M. Silver, reviewing Genome in The New York Times, argues that the book's theme is that each individual's genome contains "echoes" (Ridley's word) of their ancestors' lives. Silver calls Ridley "adamant" in believing that the use of "personal genetics" must not be left for doctors or governments to control, following on from the mistakes of eugenics a century ago, but that it's a fundamental human right to "see and use the messages in their own DNA as they see fit." Silver describes the book as remarkable for focusing on "pure intellectual discovery", providing "delightful stories". He suggests that even practising geneticists will gain a sense of wonder from the "hidden secrets" in the book. [2]

Apoptosis is a decentralised business. That is the beauty of it. Like the development of the embryo, it harnesses the self-knowledge of each cell. There is only one conceptual difficulty: how apoptosis could have evolved. Arguably, more damage has been done by false negatives (true genes that have been prematurely ruled out on inadequate data) than by false positives (suspicions of a link that later prove unfounded). The whole serotonin system is about biological determinism. Your chances of becoming a criminal are affected by your brain chemistry. But that does not mean, as it is usually assumed to mean, that your behaviour is socially immutable. Quite the reverse: your brain chemistry is determined by the social signals to which you are exposed. Biology determines behaviour yet is determined by society. This blew my mind. I had never thought about this. In Nature Via Nurture, Ridley covers this in greater detail. Genome is, in my opinion, Matt Ridley’s best book. Written in 1999, it’s likely outdated in 2022, but I still learnt a lot about biology, genetics, evolution and heredity and changed much of my thinking.

Genome

Paternal cells, by contrast, are comparatively scarce in the brain, but much commoner in the muscles. Where they do appear in the brain, however, they contribute to the development of the hypothalamus, amygdala and preoptic area. These areas comprise part of the ‘limbic system’ and are responsible for the control of emotions. Most of the striatum, cortex and hippocampus of the mouse brain are consistently made by these maternal cells, but that such cells are excluded from the hypothalamus. The cortex is the place where sensory information is processed and behaviour is produced. Feels out-of-date: Because the scientific research cites is so cutting edge, it leaves you wondering if, in the approximately 20 years since the book was written, there has been more progress.