Encouraging advances in biology delineated through accessible, inviting writing.
A survey of the new field of synthetic biology, “the science of building simple organisms or ‘biological apps’ to make manufacturing greener, energy production more sustainable, agriculture more robust and medicine more powerful and precise.”
In this energetic and optimistic book, Poznansky, former CEO of the Ontario Genomics Institute, shows how synthetic biology can be used to contend with major issues involving health, food, and the environment. This combination of engineering and molecular biology serves to design and build synthetic gene circuits and biomolecular components to reprogram organisms. The products are new life-forms, whether completely novel or partly modified. Examples include viruses that target specific diseased cells, genetically modified cells that remove heavy metals from lakes and rivers, and bacterium that take carbon out of the atmosphere. In layman’s terms, Poznansky explains this new world of unnatural selection and nonrandom mutation, evolution by human design. Although he is profoundly enthusiastic about the prospects of genomics technologies and engineering, he recognizes that we are at the beginning of a process that requires the safest and most appropriate approaches: genetic manipulation incorporating safety switches to ensure containment, further understanding of gene editing, insertion, and expression, and the avoidance of the new gene being identified as a foreign substance. With sensible language and peer-reviewed research, the author explores the present and coming needs regarding global health care, food security, and pollution and examines the history of genetically modified organisms. Of special concern are the roles of ethics and regulation regarding safety, public interest, risk vs. reward, and the potential detrimental interference of political skulduggery, special-interest groups, and large corporations. Poznansky also takes to task anti-vaxxers and those that doubt the severity of climate change, while lauding the grassroots efforts—“the democratization of science”—that have already shown some promising results.
Encouraging advances in biology delineated through accessible, inviting writing.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77041-535-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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
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