In the Beginning Was the Worm: Finding the Secrets of Life in a Tiny Hermaphrodite - Hardcover

Brown, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743207165 ISBN 13: 9780743207164

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

The fascinating story of the quest to decode for the first time the entire DNA of a living creature -- a tiny transparent worm only half a millimetre long. This book is an account of the first great triumph of genomics: the thirty-year struggle to decode the complete DNA of a nematode worm. Success in this was what made the human genome project possible. IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORM is an exciting but scrupulous account of a genuine scientific triumph, which will delight both those who know the subject and those who don't. IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORM tells of some remarkable characters who have changed our approach to science irrevocably, among them Sydney Brenner, a heroic dreamer who first thought of understanding an animal as a sort of biological Meccano; John Sulston, his first post-doctoral student, who managed to raise [pound]30 million; his friend, Bob Orvitz, who has, to all intents and purposes, spent more than thirty years studying the 22 cells of a worm's vulva; and Fred Sanger, the only man to have won two Nobel Prizes in the same discipline. Decades of painstaking research triumphed in 1998, when this worm was the first creature to have all its DNA mapped -- but now what? We still don't know how to build a single worm. In this intriguing story of dreams and disillusionment, Andrew Brown contemplates the next fifty years of biological science, and the way that ignorance expands to surround all available knowledge.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Brown is a freelance journalist who writes extensively for the SUNDAY TIMES, the INDEPENDENT and the DAILY MAIL. In 1995 he won the Templeton Prize as the best religious affairs correspondent in Europe. As well as THE DARWIN WARS he is the author of a highly acclaimed book on the London police called WATCHING THE DETECTIVES.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743207165
• ISBN 13: 9780743207164
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256