Genome by Matt Ridley
17 Dec 2017This is one of the most intriguing books I read on this topic. Matt Ridley took extra care in dissiminating the ideas and played very carefully on the edge between over-simplifying the topic vs making it too technical.
This book has a subtitle “The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters”, quite literally the author just says 23 stories that are about the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a very interesting narrative. The book concludes with a very interesting note on free will and how it fits in the “everything is determined in the genes” narrative.
From the beginning to the end, the book is very gripping. It almost felt like I was reading a detective novel. The quote above is my own thought when reading about Chromosome 15, and how missing a portion of it is very unfortunate. If the portion is missing in the chromosome from a mother, then it leads to Angelman Syndrome. In case, the portion is missing in the chromosome from a father, then it leads to Prader-willi Syndrome. This portion is a gene and it is the exact same gene. This is very interesting when you realize how different both those conditions are and how narrow their actual cause is.
Anyways, Matt Ridley did a very good job to shed some light on a very exciting topic. In the process, he used anecdotes, scientific explanations, and his own feelings without getting carried away with anything. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested on this topic, irrespective of their background.