The Language of the Genes

The Language of the Genes
Steve Jones

Steve Jones’s highly acclaimed, double prize-winning, bestselling first book is now fully revised to cover all the new genetic breakthroughs from GM food to Dolly the sheep. ’An essential sightseer’s guide to our own genetic terrain.’

Peter Tallack, Sunday Telegraph

’Superb and stimulating…an exhilarating trip around the double spiral of DNA, a rush of gravity-defying concepts and wild swerves of the scientific imagination.’

J.G. Ballard, Daily Telegraph

’Not so much divination as demystification… An attempt to bring genetics and evolution more into the public domain. If, for instance, you ever wondered just what genetic engineering is about, here is as good a place as any to discover. Few have Jones’s ability to communicate a difficult idea with such humour, clarity, precision and ease.’

Laurence Hurst, Times Higher

‘Sensitive to the social issues raised by genetics… yet Jones’s interest reaches beyond contemporary social issues to the human past, to what genetics can and cannot tell us about our evolution and patterns of social development. He interleaves a broad knowledge of biology with considerations of cultural, demographic and – as his title indicates – linguistic history. At once instructive and captivating.’

Daniel J.Kevles, London Review of Books

STEVE JONES

The Language of the Genes

Biology, History and the Evolutionary Future

Revised Edition

DEDICATION (#ulink_2f182d8d-04a7-55b7-9ab6-5989145d9eac)

To my parents and my brotherwho share my genes and my affection

CONTENTS

Cover (#ud66de2e0-f9ce-52c2-a8b3-8bb33a5cb376)

Title Page (#u1dcd5fea-10a0-5b60-88b7-8515806e345d)

Dedication (#ub0e666d5-c965-5c75-ad54-94e613d9a2a2)

Preface: A Malacologist’s Apology (#u089786de-e669-5a66-9e8d-17428cfd755e)

Introduction: The Fingerprints of History (#uc426ca61-cd0b-548e-9856-d2072f47f2cb)

1 A Message from our Ancestors (#u7690fc2b-c58b-55a2-8e3c-0896de31d270)

2 The Rules of the Game (#ufef66067-6447-5308-ba3f-0e939f9c2ac0)

3 Herodotus Revised (#uf90d9a58-4548-5d11-b7df-ea1ab896be9b)

4 Change or Decay (#litres_trial_promo)

5 Caliban’s Revenge (#litres_trial_promo)

6 Behind the Screen (#litres_trial_promo)

7 The Battle of the Sexes (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Clocks, Fossils and Apes (#litres_trial_promo)

9 Time and Chance (#litres_trial_promo)

10 The Economics of Eden (#litres_trial_promo)

11 The Kingdoms of Cain (#litres_trial_promo)

12 Darwin’s Strategist (#litres_trial_promo)

13 The Deadly Fevers (#litres_trial_promo)

14 Cousins under the Skin (#litres_trial_promo)

15 Evolution Applied (#litres_trial_promo)

16 The Modern Prometheus (#litres_trial_promo)

17 The Evolution of Utopia (#litres_trial_promo)

Appendix: A Bibliographic Sketch (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Adout the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Preface A MALACOLOGIST’S APOLOGY (#ulink_1f3ce6a9-cf3b-503f-a8e7-95909c008894)

I have spent – some might say wasted – most of my scientific career working on snails. A malacologist may seem an unlikely author for a book about human genetics. However, my research, when I was still able to do it, was not driven by a deep interest in molluscs. Indeed, one of the few occasions when I thought of giving up biology as a career was when I first had to dissect one. Thirty years ago snails were among the few creatures whose genes could be used to study evolution. They carry a statement of ancestry on their shells in the form of inherited patterns of colour and banding. By counting genes in different places and trying to relate them to the environment one could get an idea of how and why snail populations diverged from each other: of why and how they evolved.

At the time, the idea that it might ever be possible to do the same with humans seemed absurd. Genetics textbooks of the 1960s were routine things. They dealt with the inheritance of pea shape, the sex lives of fungi and the new discoveries about the molecular biology of viruses and their bacterial hosts. Of ourselves, there was scarcely a mention – usually just a short chapter tagged on at the end which described pedigrees of abnormalities such as haemophilia or colour blindness.

Part of this reticence was due to ignorance but part came from the dismal history of the subject. In its early days, the study of human inheritance was the haunt of charlatans, most of whom had a political axe to grind. Absurd pedigrees purporting to show family lines of criminality or genius were the norm. Ignorance and confidence went together. Many biologists argued that it was possible to improve humankind by selective breeding or by the elimination of the unfit. The adulteration of the science reached its disastrous end in the Nazi experiment, and for many years it was seen as at best unfashionable to discuss the nature of inborn differences among people.

After the Second World War, the United Nations published a book – Statement on Race, by the American anthropologist Ashley Montagu – which tried to kill some of the genetical myths. I read this as a schoolboy and found it unpersuasive and hard to follow, although its liberal message was clear enough. Re-reading it a few years ago showed why: Ashley Montagu had tried, nobly, to make bricks without straw. The information needed to understand ourselves was simply not available and there seemed little prospect that it ever would be. Human genetics had moved from a series of malign to an equivalent set of pious opinions.

Now everything has been transformed. Homo sapiens is no longer the great unknown of the genetical world but has become its workhorse. More is known about the geographical patterns of genes in people than about those of any other animal (snails, incidentally, still come second). The three thousand million letters in the DNA alphabet have, at last, been read from end to end and, so it seems, the century of genetics that began with the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws has ended with a new and revolutionary insight into ourselves.