Genome - The autobiography of a species
- Feb 27, 2018
- 3 min read
How I came across this book: In my quest to find a connection between genes and evolution.
Favorite Line from the book:
Far from behavior being at the mercy of our biology, our biology is often at the mercy of our behavior.
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.” Oscar Wilde
The human brain is a far more impressive machine than the genome, yet the dichotomy is a false one. The brain is created by genes. The very fact that it is a machine designed to be modified by experience is written in the genes.
In 1996, I was still in high school when ‘Dolly,’ the Scottish sheep was cloned. Some newspapers and conservative groups equated this to ‘playing God’ whereas scientist claimed it as the biggest breakthrough since Watson & Crick DNA, half a century ago. How did the scientists reach this level of advanced science? More importantly, how have human genes evolved over the course of four billion years to make us the most intelligent and advanced species on this planet? Where have humans come from and why are we here? Books like ‘Freedom from the known,’ takes its reader on a spiritual journey to answer some of these questions. Matt Ridley makes a scientific journey since the beginning of this planet to connect the evolutionary nature of our genes to the present state.
The human genome project was declared complete in 2000, approximately 1 year after this book was published. Scientists have made astronomical progress over the last 2 decades, but this work has been based on some of the forefathers who have worked on the ‘essence of our lives’ relentlessly. Each cell has twenty-three pair of chromosomes. Each chromosome has the genes necessary for our daily function. A gene itself lives on a long strand of DNA, which itself is composed of molecule pairs, called nucleotides. If the genome is a book, then chromosomes can be described as chapters. Matt Ridley has interestingly divided the book into twenty-three chapters – equivalent to twenty-three chromosomes in our body. The story which our genes tell us is a fascinating one. The genes on our chromosomes are like short stories, making the human genome the biggest, and the most informative book on the planet. All this information fits into a tiny nucleus on a tiny cell that could easily sit on the tip of a pin.
We have all evolved from a common ancestor. We have come a long way from our days of protozoa, a bacterium or a fish. Matt Ridley describes beautifully how we have retained some of the characters of ancestors to adapt to our environment. Even today we are much more similar to other animals than we would like to wish - 98% similar to a chimpanzee. Humans & chimpanzees shared a common ancestor approximately 5-10 million years ago – one group of apes evolved into chimpanzees and the other into Homo sapiens. Thousands of years ago, humans were much smaller, but with better nutrition and natural selection, we have grown much taller. In Hindu mythology, once Lord Krishna’s mother asked him to open his mouth as he was eating dirt. Lord Krishna opened his mouth and showed his mother the whole universe in all its variety, with all the forms of life, and time and nature and action, and hopes. Natural selection is the process by which genes change their sequence. In the process of changing, those genes laid down a record of our four-billion-year biography as a biological lineage. Indeed, the whole universe in all its variety has been scribbled into each one of us through our genes. Lord Krishna was trying to show his mother the entire evolutionary sequence, which was written in his genes, and which lays within all of us!
Matt Ridley gives an excellent argument about nature vs. nurture in his book. Genes determine a lot of things including how long we live, our personality, our intelligence and much more. All this is a product of our genes and our environment. As we grow, we slowly leave behind some of the traits, which were innate and acquire habits bought upon from the environment. With a complete roadmap of the human genome, scientists may hold the key to a new age of health and wellness, characterized by a disease-free world. But the disease keeps evolving and mutating as well. By the time chemotherapy starts working on cancer, the cancer cells have already mutated. One thing is for sure – this is not the first or the last edition of the book ‘GENOME,' since our genes continue to evolve. But, the next time you have a debate with your friend about the reason of our existence, you know where the answer lies – in your genomes.
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