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
A straightforward, carefully detailed presentation of how ``fruit comes from flowers,'' from winter's snow-covered buds through pollination and growth to ripening and harvest. Like the text, the illustrations are admirably clear and attractive, including the larger-than-life depiction of the parts of the flower at different stages. An excellent contribution to the solidly useful ``Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science'' series. (Nonfiction/Picture book. 4-9)
Pub Date: Jan. 30, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-020055-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1991
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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