• Complain

Matthew Cobb - Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code

Here you can read online Matthew Cobb - Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2015, publisher: Profile Books Ltd, genre: Religion. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Profile Books Ltd
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2015
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Lifes Greatest Secret is the story of the discovery and cracking of the genetic code. This great scientific breakthrough has had far-reaching consequences for how we understand ourselves and our place in the natural world. The code forms the most striking proof of Darwins hypothesis that all organisms are related, holds tremendous promise for improving human well-being, and has transformed the way we think about life. Matthew Cobb interweaves science, biography and anecdote in a book that mixes remarkable insights, theoretical dead-ends and ingenious experiments with the pace of a thriller. He describes cooperation and competition among some of the twentieth-centurys most outstanding and eccentric minds, moves between biology, physics and chemistry, and shows the part played by computing and cybernetics. The story spans the globe, from Cambridge MA to Cambridge UK, New York to Paris, London to Moscow. It is both thrilling science and a fascinating story about how science is done.

Matthew Cobb: author's other books


Who wrote Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Matthew Cobb is a respected scientist and historian, and he has combined both disciplines to spectacular effect in this compelling, authoritative and insightful account of how life works at the deepest level. Its a bloody brilliant book. Professor Brian Cox

Lifes Greatest Secret is the logical sequel to Jim Watsons The Double Helix. While Watson and Crick deserve their plaudits for discovering the structure of DNA, that was only part of the story. Beginning to understand how that helix works how its DNA code is turned into bodies and behaviours took another fifteen years of amazing work by an army of dedicated men and women. These are the unknown heroes of modern genetics, and their tale is the subject of Cobbs fascinating book. Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago and author of Why Evolution is True

Most people think the race to sequence the human genome culminated at the 2000 White House Mission Accomplished announcement. In Lifes Greatest Secret, we learn that it was just one chapter of a far more interesting and continuing story. Eric Topol, Professor of Genomics and Director, Scripps Translational Science Institute and author of The Patient Will See You Now

Gripping, insightful history, often from the mouths of the participants themselves. Kirkus Reviews

Rich, thrilling and thorough, this is the definitive history of arguably the greatest of all scientific revolutions. Adam Rutherford, science writer, broadbcaster and author of Creation

Writing with flair, charisma and authority, this is Cobbs magnum opus. But more important than that, this is humankinds magnum opus. This is the story of a great human endeavour a global adventure spanning decades which unravelled how life really works. No area of science is more fundamental or more important; read about it and be filled with wonder. Daniel M. Davis, author of The Compatibility Gene

Cobb reveals the astonishing drama of the moment genetics and information technology collided, shaping the modern world and modern thought. Paul Mason, Channel 4 News

ALSO BY MATTHEW COBB

The Egg and Sperm Race: The Seventeenth Century

Scientists who Unravelled the Secrets of Sex, Life and Growth (published in the US as Generation)

The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis

Eleven Days in August: The Liberation of Paris 1944

Copyright 2015 by Matthew Cobb First published in Great Briain in 2015 by - photo 1

Copyright 2015 by Matthew Cobb

First published in Great Briain in 2015 by

Profile Books Ltd

3 Holford Yard

Bevin Way

London wc1x 9hd

www.profilebooks.com

Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

Typeset in Palatino by MacGuru Ltd

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015937254

ISBN: 978-0-465-06266-9 (e-book)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of John Pickstone (19442014)

historian, colleague, friend.

CONTENTS

The RNA genetic code as finally established in 1967 U C A and G are the RNA - photo 2

The RNA genetic code, as finally established in 1967. U, C, A and G are the RNA bases. The 20 naturally occurring amino acids are given in the table, as three-letter abbreviations (e.g. Phe = phenylalanine). In RNA, Uracil (U) replaces the Thymine (T) base found in DNA. AUG codes for both methionine (Met) and for the start of the message. Slight variants of this code are found in some species, and in the mitochondria that are found in our cells see .

An outline of how the genetic code works during protein synthesis A DNA double - photo 3

An outline of how the genetic code works during protein synthesis. A DNA double helix in the cell nucleus is partially unravelled and one strand is transcribed into RNA (mRNA). In organisms with a cell nucleus, this mRNA often contains irrelevant sequences (introns) that are spliced out to form mature mRNA which then leaves the nucleus. In the cells cytoplasm, RNA-based ribosomes read the message, beginning at AUG. Transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules, synthesised by the cell from its DNA, carry on one side an anti-codon that binds with a particular mRNA codon and, on the other side, a binding site that links to a specific amino acid. In a process known as translation, tRNA molecules attached to an amino acid shuttle through the ribosome, bind with the mRNA codon and release their amino acid, thereby creating a protein chain.

AUG

In April 1953, Jim Watson and Francis Crick published a scientific paper in the journal Nature in which they described the double helix structure of DNA, the stuff that genes are made of. In a second article that appeared six weeks later, Watson and Crick put forward a hypothesis with regard to the function of the bases the four kinds of molecule that are spaced along each strand of the double helix and which bind the two strands together. They wrote: it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code which carries the genetical information.

This phrase, which was almost certainly the work of Crick, must have seemed both utterly strange and completely familiar to those who read the article. It was strange because nothing so precise had ever been said before no one had previously referred to genetical information. This was a category that Watson and Crick had just invented. And yet it was familiar because it fitted so well with the ideas that were in the air at the time. It was adopted without debate; this new way of looking at life seemed so obvious that it was immediately accepted by scientists around the world. Today, these words, or something like them, are said every day in classrooms all over the planet as teachers explain the nature of genes and what they contain.

This book explores the surprising origin of these ideas, which can be traced back to physics and mathematics, and to wartime work on anti-aircraft guns and signals communication. It describes the way in which these concepts entered biology through the then-fashionable field of cybernetics, and how they were transformed as biologists sought to understand lifes greatest secret the nature of the genetic code. It is a story of ideas and experimentation, of ingenuity, insight and dead-ends, and of the race to make the greatest discovery of twentieth-century biology, a discovery that has opened up a brave new world for the twenty-first century.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code»

Look at similar books to Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code»

Discussion, reviews of the book Lifes Greatest Secret: The Story of the Race to Crack the Genetic Code and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.