Two Books About Breast and Ovarian Cancer Genetics by Masha Gessen and Jessica Queller

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted April 11, 2008 in Books About DNA, DNA Quotes and Excerpts, DNA in General

Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene by Masha Gessen

In 2004 genetic testing revealed that Masha Gessen had a mutation that predisposed her to ovarian and breast cancer. The discovery initiated Gessen into a club of sorts: the small (but exponentially expanding) group of people in possession of a new and different way of knowing themselves through what is inscribed in the strands of their DNA. As she wrestled with a wrenching personal decision—what to do with such knowledge—Gessen explored the landscape of this brave new world, speaking with others like her and with experts including medical researchers, historians, and religious thinkers.

Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, The Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny by Jessica Queller

Laura Landro of the Wall Street Journal reviewed both Blood Matters and Pretty Is What Changes.

As we learn more about our risks of developing a wide range of cancers and diseases, how and when should we use that information in making life-altering decisions?

That is the question tackled in two books, both of them written by women in their 30s who are of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and who learn that they carry the BRCA breast- and ovarian-cancer gene mutation that is common to their ethnic heritage. When Jessica Queller, a television writer, and Masha Gessen, a journalist, are confronted with the prospect of imminent prophylactic mastectomies and the future removal of their ovaries, they find themselves weighing the elevated cancer risk against their unrealized personal goals and their fear of disfiguring surgery. The women also have to contend with the often conflicting advice they receive from genetic counselors, scientists, physicians and fellow patients.

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DNA Quote: Merchants of Immortality by Stephen S. Hall

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted March 28, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

This was keyboard biology: you could type in the DNA letters of the gene for telomerase found in yeast or Euplotes just as you would type a word or phrase into a search engine like Google, punch a button, and send supercomputers electronically scurrying through vast digital tracts of human DNA sequences, looking for a proximate match - that is, for homology.

~Merchants of Immortality by Stephen S. Hall

Tags: genetics, genes, dna, life extension, quotes

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Books About DNA: Life As It Is by William Loomis

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted March 21, 2008 in Books About DNA, DNA Quotes and Excerpts, DNA in General

Life As It Is by William F. Loomis

Book Description:

“This concise, accessible book considers from a biological perspective the controversial issues of our day: abortion, euthanasia, engineered evolution, cooperativity, and the future of sustainable life on this planet. Exploring in fascinating detail the processes by which cells come into being and multiply, Loomis clearly and simply explains the latest in complex biological research. He reviews recent insights into molecular and human evolution, the role of DNA sequences in determining traits, and the biological basis for consciousness, all of which, he argues, need to be considered when making life-and-death decisions and wrestling with questions about the limits to intervention.”

via Philip Manning’s Science Book News #97

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DNA Quote: Steven Pinker

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted March 14, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

“With constitutional factors (genes and chance) being important but invisible, people tend to blur cause and effect in thinking back on supposedly formative childhood vignettes. …Rather than childhood experiences causing us to be who we are, who we are causes our childhood experiences.”

~Steven Pinker, experimental psychologist at Harvard University, in Curious Minds.

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DNA Quote: Dr. John Setaro

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted March 7, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

“There is no genetic shortcoming which cannot be overcome, and no genetic advantage which, if done correctly, cannot be squandered.”

~Dr. John Setaro, Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at Yale University

via Gene Sherpas

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DNA Excerpt: Carly Fiorina

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 29, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

From Tough Choices: A Memoir by Carly Fiorina:

The goal was not for Hewlett-Packard to take over Compaq, as Compaq had done with DEC and Tandem. The goal was to use the best of both companies to build something stronger and better. We would use the best of both product lines, both management teams, and both cultures. We needed the DNA of both companies to form a new company that could compete and win in the twenty-first century. We needed two strands of DNA to adapt to the changing industry landscape.

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DNA Excerpt: Diana Gabaldon’s A Breath of Snow and Ashes

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 22, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

…Before he could explain his errand, Mrs. Bug had sat him down with a bowl of his own, a jug of honey, a plate of savory fried bacon, hot toast dripping butter, and a fresh cup of something dark and fragrant that looked like coffee. Jem was next to him, already smeared with honey and buttered to the ears. For a traitorous instant, he wondered whether Brianna was perhaps a bit of a sluggard, though certainly never a slattern.

Then he glanced across the table at Claire [Brianna's mother], uncombed hair standing on end as she blinked sleepily at him over the toast, and generously concluded that it probably wasn’t a conscious choice on Bree’s part, but rather the influence of genetics.

~A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

This book is part of the Outlander series featuring Claire who is a time traveler flitting between the 1940’s and 1770’s. The books are set in Western Europe and Colonial America. I can imagine many amateur genealogists would love to be able to time travel and sneak a peek at their ancestors while gathering some DNA samples. Just be careful not to be mistaken for a witch!

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DNA Quote: Genetic Anthropologist Spencer Wells

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 15, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

From a conversation between writer Will Self and genetic anthropologist Spencer Wells published at Seed:

Spencer Wells: I think there’s something inherent in humans that, yes, makes us want to migrate, but also to have that connection to place, even though we’re moving. I think there is something of a wanderlust in our DNA, something that makes us want to explore a little bit further, but at the same time we want to actually be in the place. The way we travel today, you’re not in the place. There’s never any “there” there.

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DNA Quote: Kevin Kelly

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted February 8, 2008 in DNA Quotes and Excerpts

From Kevin Kelly’s essay, Better Than Free:

Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won’t be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it — the manual for your genes so to speak — will be expensive.

Kind of what I said - Drug Companies Should Offer Free DNA Tests.

(HT: Ryan)

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Books About DNA: Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of the Telomeres

by Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Posted January 25, 2008 in Books About DNA, DNA Quotes and Excerpts

…her [Elizabeth Blackburn's] delight in books exceeded the bounds of obedient studiousness - in particular, she was thrilled by her recent discovery of a biology text complete with detailed illustrations of amino acids, strung together in long chains and then folded up into complex three-dimensional shapes to form enzymes and other proteins. For Liz, these elegant structures had a teasing beauty, promising tantalizing clues to the processes of life and yet also enfolding that mystery. Even the names of the amino acids–phenylanine, leucine–struck her as poetic. Though she confessed her fascination to no one, she traced drawings of amino acids on large, thin sheets of white paper and then tacked them up on her bedroom wall.

From Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA by Catherine Brady

Tags: telomeres, elizabeth blackburn, genetics, genes, dna, science, books, scientists

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