Unlock the Secrets of Genetics: Exploring the Epigenetics Revolution in Modern Biology

Neel K: A fantastic insight into the burgeoning study of epigenetics. The common use of fairly technical language made it difficult to follow at times, but nonetheless a compelling read.

Australia on May 23, 2023

Perceptive Reader: How many of us gone roumd and round a location, failing to find it, despite it being shown neatly and boldly in the Google Map or site?
Nearly everyone, haven’t we?
Why? Those maps have been prepared with the help of inputs from satellites and many other reliable, high-end sources. All that should have made things easier. But reality is rather different.
Why?
This book is NOT about that. But it deals with a similar problem, which actually affects us more.
You see, the Human Genome Project had given us this idea that with this 'map', problems of human body can be sorted out quickly and efficiently. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, better understanding of genetics have made those notions even more fallible.
This book, rather than lamenting over such problems, tries to find answers using cutting edge research in a newly (but fast) developing area called epigenetics.
It’s not an easy book. It’s not even very readable, being devoid of pop-culture or literary references. But content-wise it’s a very good book.
Recommended.

India on Mar 13, 2023

Lindosland: This is a great book for anyone who like me, is trying to make sense of what is really going on in the genome, in that it brings together many facts from research papers. I've given it five stars for this reason, and despite my many criticisms below, because it tackles an incredibly complex subject in an understandable and fascinating way. The criticisms come from my intense prior involvement in the subject, and are challenges to some of the ideas which I hope might help other readers. The book fails to put over the central story regarding the big question, "what is going on in the genome and to what ends?" I say this because the reader is led to believe that epigenetics explains many things that could not be explained before, such as how cells acquire their individual identity and retain it over decades. Methylation, we are told here, has been said to be virtually irreversible, so it fits the bill, but as we are later told the effects of methylation can be undone by further addition. Notable for their absence are the terms 'transcription factor', and ''genetic cascade' (they are not even in the index), though they are the bedrock of genetic theory; complex books have been written...

United Kingdom on Feb 09, 2015

Paul R. Fleischman M.D. author of Wonder: When and Why the World Appears Radiant.: This book is interesting and notably competent science writing. The proper audience for this book is someone with specific interests in genetics, and biology.
The word, “epigenetics” refers to all those ways in which influences are imposed on the genetic codes in DNA in our cells. Unfortunately, as Nessa Carey reminds us on page, 101, the word has been used in many different ways, and therefore a book on epigenetics ends up resembling a book called, “Many Topics About Genetics and Biology.” One of the strong points of this book is the author’s determination to provide the reader with a text that is thorough and up-to-date, and one of the problems with this book is the shotgun, or smorgasbord effect of trying to cover many topics related by an abstract concept, but not necessarily very similar to each other.
This book consists of sixteen chapters, each one of which deals with a particular cellular phenomenon in which the genetics of DNA is superceded or modified by some other effect. For example, in Chapter Two, the author discusses cell differentiation, why the cells in our body all contain the same DNA but make different tissue types. In Chapter Five, the author...

United States on Apr 21, 2014

Daniel N. Lionsden: One reviewer on the back cover said that Nessa Carey's "book combines an easy style with a textbook's thoroughness....A bold attempt to bring epigenetics to a wide audience." While it is an easy style, it is not an easy read. It becomes very technical in some parts. Her writing is seasoned with occasional light-hearted quips and plenty of interesting narratives. Maybe her book could have been made more user-friendly for the layman if she had put the very technical material in appendices and kept the warm, friendly chats in the main text. Such a tactic might help the less-technically-minded reader peruse her book if her intent was to capture a wide audience.

Is it possible that acquired characteristics can be inherited to the third, or even the fourth generation? Carey thinks so. She quotes Exodus 20:5, "For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me Exodus," as a segue for chapter 6, "The Sins of the Fathers." She assures the reader that acquired characteristic can be passed on to several generations of offspring. In a narrowly defined sense, Lamarck was correct. Biology...

United States on Dec 07, 2013

Serghiou Const: The book is masterly in its treatment of this young, exciting, and profoundly significant field of biological research. The author's writing is clear, substantive, vivid, acutely insightful in matters relating to evolution, witty while her frequent use of analogy exemplary. In the course of the book, the author revisits topics in varying contexts but far from this being repetitious on the contrary it refreshes and embeds concepts in the mind of the reader and enhances its interconnection. Another positive element in the book is that on several instances there is a pictorial illustration of the issue raised by the author so that the reader has the benefit to visually follow the sequence of events on the issue raised. I have, however, to warn the prospective reader that the preceding notwithstanding the book is intrinsically not an easy read due to its conceptual richness, the multiplicity, subtlety, intricate sequence of interactions and the complexity of the epigenetic code - especially as related to histone modifications as opposed to DNA methylation - much of it presently understood only in broad outline.

Until the turn of the century DNA was viewed as a blueprint or a...

United Kingdom on Nov 08, 2013

Sphex: Epigenetics is why we don't have teeth in our eyeballs, why plants don't have leaves growing out of their roots, and why two genetically identical individuals are never identical. It's also becoming an important and fertile area of biological research, and in this book Nessa Carey tells the fascinating story of the epigenetics revolution that's currently underway.

That something else must be going on in addition to the instructions contained in the genetic code is clear from the following simple fact. All the (somatic) cells in our body have exactly the same set of genes, but not all cells are the same. Some make teeth and others make eyeballs. And while the genes we inherit are unchanging throughout our lifetimes, the epigenome controlling their expression depends on all sorts of factors, including environmental influences. The separation of nature and nurture has long been a dubious dichotomy. Now, we are beginning to map the molecules that actually bridge the gap between these two supposed sides of human nature.

The famous double helix of DNA was one of the most impressive scientific images of the second half of the twentieth century. And it rightly hogged the...

United Kingdom on Nov 12, 2012