It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick
- By Greg Gibson
- Published Dec 24, 2008 by FT Press. Part of the FT Press Science series.
- Copyright 2009
- Dimensions: 6 X 9
- Pages: 208
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-13-713746-X
- ISBN-13: 978-0-13-713746-6
- eBook (Adobe DRM)
- ISBN-10: 0-13-715573-5
- ISBN-13: 978-0-13-715573-6
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Product Author Bios
Greg Gibson is Professor of Genetics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and of Integrative Biology at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is a leader in the new field of genomics, studying how interactions between genes and the environment affect human health and organismal evolution. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and did postdoctoral work at Stanford University. He is on the editorial boards of PLoS Genetics, Current Biology, Genetics, and other leading journals, and with Spencer V. Muse, coauthored A Primer of Genome Science, one of the field’s leading textbooks, now in its third edition.
Human beings have astonishing genetic vulnerabilities. More than half of us will die from complex diseases that trace directly to those vulnerabilities, and the modern world we’ve created places us at unprecedented risk from them. In It Takes a Genome, Greg Gibson posits a revolutionary new hypothesis: Our genome is out of equilibrium, both with itself and its environment. Simply put, our genes aren’t coping well with modern culture. Our bodies were never designed to subsist on fat and sugary foods; our immune systems weren’t designed for today’s clean, bland environments; our minds weren’t designed to process hard-edged, artificial electronic inputs from dawn ‘til midnight. And that’s why so many of us suffer from chronic diseases that barely touched our ancestors.
Gibson begins by revealing the stunningly complex ways in which multiple genes cooperate and interact to shape our bodies and influence our behaviors. Then, drawing on the very latest science, he explains the genetic “mismatches” that increasingly lead to cancer, diabetes, inflammatory and infectious diseases, AIDS, depression, and senility. He concludes with a look at the probable genetic variations in human psychology, sharing the evidence that traits like introversion and agreeableness are grounded in equally complex genetic interactions.
It Takes A Genome demolishes yesterday’s stale debates over “nature vs. nurture,” introducing a new view that is far more intriguing, and far closer to the truth.
- See how broken genes cause cancer
Meet the body’s “genetic repairmen”—and understand what happens when they fail - The growing price of the modern lifestyle
Why one-third of all Westerners have obesity, Type 2 diabetes, or other signs of “metabolic syndrome” - The Alzheimer’s generation
Why some of us are predisposed to dementia - What’s really normal: the deepest lessons of the human genome
The remarkable diversity of physical and emotional “normality”
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39 of 54 people found the following review helpful
Frustratingly unfulfilling,
This review is from: It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick (Hardcover)
This book has come as quite a disappointment to me. I am a avid reader of science books. I love genetics especially. I am a big fan of Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley. I haven't learnt anything new by reading It Takes a Genome. If you are already familiar with personal genomics such as 23andMe or deCODEme, you won't learn anything either. The book is very short (under 150 pages) and yet manages to be tedious, repetitive and poorly informative at the same time.This book is clearly geared towards people who have absolutely no prior knowledge of genetics. Gibson's tone give the impression that he is addressing a bunch of teenagers. This may be because he does teach teenagers at the North Carolina State University. He keeps re-explaining basic concepts as if he was holding a lecture in front of an audience that needed to be reminded of what had been said a few minutes ago. His use of celebrities as examples and fast food for metaphors reinforce this impression that the book... Read more
27 of 37 people found the following review helpful
A Genetic Look at How our Quantities of Life effect our Quality of Life., By Sniff Code "www.sniffcode.com" (Somewhere out there) - See all my reviews
This review is from: It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick (Hardcover)
Barack Obama introduced to the U.S. Senate "The Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act of 2006". Greg Gibson, author of "It Takes a Genome", advises us that the title of this Act alone is indicative of how future medicine will have have to confront the dynamic nature of disease. "Dynamic" is the optimum word here since it tears down the traditionally static portraiture that we've been given of disease and the genome. Gibson, with this book seeks to challenge the idea that there is a "gene for this disease" and a "gene for that disease", and replacing it with the more accurate view of a variety of genes that are networked and talking to each other. Gibson's next mission is to show how changes in our environment and our lifestyles disrupts how this network functions.Perhaps the greatest virtue of this book is how balanced Gibson approaches the idea of a genome that conflicts with modernity. I must admit, I picked up the book expecting (and, admittedly, welcoming) a certain... Read more
5 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Waste of time, By
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This review is from: It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life is Making Us Sick (Kindle Edition)
All this book tells you is there is still a whole lot we don't know about genetics, well no kiddin Sherlock... Do not recommend getting this.
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Online Sample Chapter
It Takes a Genome: How a Clash Between Our Genes and Modern Life Is Making Us Sick
Table of Contents
Preface: How a genetic culture clash with modern life is making us sick ix
Chapter 1: The adolescent genome 1
Chapter 2: Breast cancer’s broken genes 19
Chapter 3: Not so thrifty diabetes genes 41
Chapter 4: Unhealthy hygiene 65
Chapter 5: Genetic AIDS 85
Chapter 6: Generating depression 99
Chapter 7: The alzheimer’s generation 121
Chapter 8: Genetic normality 135
Endnotes 151
About the author 175
Index 177
Sample Pages
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