Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself - Softcover

Rutherford, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1617230111 ISBN 13: 9781617230110

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2014

Synopsis

Today’s scientists are radically exceeding the boundaries of evolution and engineering entirely novel creatures. Cutting edge “synthetic biology” may lead to solutions to some of the world’s most pressing crises and pave the way for inventions once relegated to science fiction.

Meanwhile, these advances are shedding new light on the biggest mystery of all—how did life begin? As we come closer and closer to understanding the ancient root that connects all living things, Adam Rutherford shows how we may finally be able to achieve the creation of new life where none existed before.

About this title

About the Author

Adam Rutherford is an editor at Nature and presents programs for BBC Radio and television. A geneticist by training, he has a Ph.D. from University College London.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The first part of this book relates what’s been learned about the origin of life on earth; the second, what’s being done to modify existing life-forms and produce new ones. Though both are engaging, many may find the first more dazzling. Rutherford starts small, discussing the cell and how it is begotten, not created but ultimately taking in genetics and DNA as well as the earth’s physical history before life emerged from a microscopic chamber at the bottom of the sea, four million years ago. The second part lacks the first’s sweeping grandeur, being set in a much narrower time frame, the 30 years bioengineering has been with us. That’s long enough, however, to have seen gene-splicing give way to synthetic biology at the field’s cutting-edge as the spider-goat and biofuels have been supplanted in novelty by the successful copying by RNA of a molecule formed by swapping in a different amino acid for one of the four naturally found in the DNA sequence, which ultimately suggests a different basis for life, one that is created, not begotten by intelligent (human) design. Creation is the first book by this geneticist-journalist with two well-received BBC4 series, The Gene Code and The Cell, to his credit. May it augur many more top-drawer science books by Rutherford. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1617230111
• ISBN 13: 9781617230110
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 289