The Gene Hunters: William Cookson’s Adventures in the Genome Jungle
The Gene Hunters: Adventures in the Genome Jungle (1994) sets out to describe the basic structure and functions of DNA, RNA and proteins, and tells the intellectual adventures of the geneticists who tried to map chromosomes and genes more precisely.
Author: William Cookson
Title: The Gene Hunters: Adventures in the Genome Jungle (1994)
Format: English hardcover (Aurum Press), 256 pages
Scope: Popular science on genetics and genome mapping
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1854102567 (ASIN 1854102567)
Genes and Disease
The book covers the main complex genetic diseases, what genetic manipulation involves, and the ethical problems raised by modern molecular techniques. Without taking sides or giving his own opinion, the author presents the main advances in genome research, informs and even goes further, so that the reader can understand what genetic research is useful for.
Knowing in Advance
Genetic research makes it possible to estimate the probability that a person will inherit a faulty gene, and so to know in advance whether they are likely to develop a disease during their life. By locating and labelling these genes, it may also become possible to avoid or prevent some diseases.
The Age of Gene Mapping
To appreciate the book, it helps to remember what gene hunting meant in the early 1990s. Researchers could not simply read a patient’s DNA. Instead they studied families affected by an inherited disease and tracked which stretches of chromosome travelled with the illness from generation to generation, a technique called linkage analysis. Once a region was found, they had to search it piece by piece, an approach known as positional cloning, until they identified the faulty gene. It could take a large team many years.
Landmark Discoveries
That approach produced some of the great scientific stories of the period. The gene responsible for cystic fibrosis was identified in 1989, after an intense international race. The gene for Huntington’s disease followed in 1993, after a decade-long search that began with large families in Venezuela, and in 1994, the year this book appeared, the first breast-cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA1, was isolated. Each success raised immediate questions about testing: whether people want to know their risk of an incurable disease, and who else should have access to that knowledge.
The Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project, formally launched in 1990, aimed to read the complete sequence of human DNA. When this book was written, it was a bold and expensive bet; a working draft was announced in 2000 and the project was declared complete in 2003. Since then the cost of sequencing a human genome has fallen dramatically, and techniques such as genome-wide association studies and CRISPR gene editing have changed the field beyond what anyone in 1994 could have described.
Reading It Today
That makes The Gene Hunters a period piece in the best sense: a record of how the science looked from the inside before the genome was read. Readers who want the later story could follow it with Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene (2016), a full history of genetics to the present day. The ethical questions Cookson raises, about prediction, privacy and the limits of intervention, have only grown more pressing.
The Reviewer’s View
The original review valued the book’s balance: it informs without preaching and leaves readers to form their own opinions on the ethical questions. That restraint is still welcome.
Tip
A basic glossary of genetic terms will help readers new to the subject.
Who Is It For?
Written in the early 1990s, as the Human Genome Project was getting under way, it is a snapshot of an exciting moment in science. Some details have dated, but it remains a clear introduction for curious readers.
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