Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 chapters
Cinderella of Soviet Science
A book on genetics fills a gaping gapMatt Ridley.
Genome: Autobiography of a species in 23 chapters/ Translated from English and edited by O. Reva. – Moscow: Eksmo, 2008. – 432 p.
The release of this brilliant popular science publication seems to be an outstanding event for several reasons at once…
First of all, the topic itself is extremely important. If we take a critical look at the history of Russian-Soviet science of the last 100 years, it turns out that genetics has been seriously, extensively and consistently engaged in about a quarter of a century. That is, two generations of scientists. Cybernetics, the second "corrupt girl of capitalism", has long been rehabilitated, mathematics, chemistry, physics developed in full, and biology remained in the clutches of Academician Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, who even after Stalin's death found approaches to Khrushchev. It was only in the early 60s that the consequences of the cult of personality in biology were overcome. Well, the 91st year has already ruined the whole of Russian science - the directors of the research institute began to sell institute lands, and the most talented young geneticists either went abroad or went to sell flowers on the corner. Perhaps, of all the sciences, it is genetics in Russia that claims to be the unfortunate Cinderella. At the same time, abroad, primarily in the USA, this science is developing at an incredible pace. Discovery after discovery is made, literally every year about a hundred genes are discovered and described – their influence on the development of the organism is fully revealed…
Secondly, the original of Matt Ridley's book is simply the ideal of a popular science publication. The author is literally in love with genetics. He carefully tracked everything that had been done in this area over the past few years, collected and analyzed the scattered material and built it into a completely artistic composition. The 23 chapters of the book are 23 human chromosomes. On each one, the author finds some particularly remarkable gene and, starting from it, tells about the origin of life on Earth, about where the soul "hides", about how heredity affects a person's character and abilities, about who is to blame for the fact that a person loses immunity from stress, about where do hereditary diseases and cancer come from… At the same time, Ridley is far from fan maximalism. He shows that the genome is a blueprint according to which a living organism is built. But it is formed under the influence of the environment, in the case of a person – society. This is how a personality is formed in the dialectical confrontations of the innate and the acquired…
Well, and thirdly, the Russian translation of the book is excellent. It is made by a person who is no less knowledgeable in the novelties of genetics than the author. Seven years have passed since the book was published in English, something new has been discovered, something has been decisively refuted… All this will be found by the Russian reader in the comments of the candidate of Biological Sciences Reva.
The book fills a gaping gap in Russian popular science literature. Its release will allow our country to regain significant positions in world genetics over time.