Dazzling discoveries in expert hands.
An exciting update on human biology in the years since the initial description of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953.
This is not a subject that popular writers have ignored, but Davis, a professor of immunology, refreshingly avoids the low-hanging fruit (life extension, designer babies) and digs into the actual science. While acknowledging the many miracles this new science will lead to (most of which will not occur in the immediate future), the author explores what contemporary scientists have learned and how they learned it. Davis emphasizes that many breakthroughs followed the development of new technology. For centuries, scientists could only examine living cells through the familiar light microscope, the magnification of which reached a limit in the 1870s before breakthroughs in the 20th century vastly increased its power. Years of work determined the structure of a single protein, insulin, and won Frederick Sanger a Nobel Prize in 1958. Today, machines do this in minutes. “It once took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to sequence a human genome,” writes Davis. “Now it takes a few hundred dollars, or less, and can be done in a single day.” The tedious process of counting and identifying living cells became much smoother with the invention of the flow cytometer. It’s easy to understand how the heart or kidney works by watching it in action but not the brain. Enter optogenetics, by which a genetically altered neuron fires when exposed to light. Following its tortuous path became easier with another advance that allowed scientists to give a cell a bright color without killing it. Davis, who writes accessibly and concisely, also examines a fairly new fascination, the gut: “There’s scarcely any state of human health or disease that hasn’t been linked with the [microbiome]. Variations have been associated with diseases as diverse as autism, asthma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and inflammatory bowel disease.” Further current research is revealing new ways that we can manipulate our resident bacteria for our benefit.
Dazzling discoveries in expert hands.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-691-21058-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
