Upgrade - Blake Crouch

 

In the future, a scientist has found how to alter our DNA to enhance our capabilities - physical, mental and emotional.  The belief is that humans will behave better if they are better.  

This dystopian novel was fascinating to me because it realistically wove DNA facts into a story, an addition I've seen coming out in more and more current fiction writing.  The story explores the consequences of genetic engineering. That's the practice of altering DNA to eliminate undesirable outcomes.  Like all human efforts to control their fate there are unintended consequences. The hero, Logan Ramsey, having been "upgraded", races to prevent the release of the changes throughout the population.  It's a fast-paced read with a modern twist.

Quotes:

"It is a  supremely cruel thing to have your mind conjure a desire which it is functionally unable to realize.  No one teaches you how to handle the death of a dream."

"Never before had I seen Homo sapiens so clearly--a species, at its most fundamental level, of storytellers.  Creatures who overlay story on everything, but especially their own lives, and in so doing, can imbue a cold random, sometimes brutal existence, with fabricated meaning."

" We were a bunch of primates who had gotten together and, against all odds, built a wondrous civilization.  But paradoxically--tragically--our creation's complexity had now far outstripped our brains' ability to manage it."

"We don't have an intelligence problem.  We have a compassion problem.  That, more than any other single factor, is what's  driving us toward extinction."

Published: 2022 Read: March 2025  Genre: Fiction

The Lost Family - Libby Copeland

 

Since 2015, after attending a genealogy cruise where I learned about genetic genealogy, the field has become a passion of mine. I even started a monthly study group in my home, which is now seven years strong. Being an avid reader, I’ve sought out books on the topic over the years. This book revisits much of what I’ve learned and offers a fantastic summary of the field’s evolution up to 2020. As a bonus, I found it at a genealogy book sale!

Libby Copeland tells the fascinating story of Alice, a retired, meticulous genealogist who took one of the earliest consumer DNA tests with 23andMe in 2012. That test revealed a discrepancy in her family history, setting her on a journey to unravel the mystery. Alice’s quest serves as a compelling backdrop to the broader story of consumer DNA testing. Copeland interviews industry pioneers, including Bennett Greenspan of FamilyTreeDNA, scientists from 23andMe, Ancestry’s DNA team, and Yaniv Erlich from MyHeritage, to trace the field’s origins and progress.

I was delighted to encounter familiar names, such as Colleen Fitzpatrick, Barbara Rae-Venter, CeCe Moore, and other early women practitioners who were instrumental in launching this discipline.

The author masterfully weaves together Alice’s personal search with the larger narrative of scientific advancements, all while addressing critical issues like privacy, security, the rights of biological parents, and the ethical use of DNA data.

I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking an overview of the origins of DNA-based family research and the resolution of a compelling mystery!

Quotes/Notes

[mentioned] Alondra Nelson, Columbia University sociologist and author of The Social Life of DNA.

[mentioned] Nelkin and Lindee authors of The DNA Mystique

"as people we are the sum of other people's choices"

"We are empowering consumers, patients, family members, caregivers to obtain all kinds of information that we couldn't provide before..."

[mentioned] Diane Harman-Hoog class is an author of The Methodology, the DNAAdoption steps for working cases. 

[mentioned] Veil Maternity Hospitals for unwed mothers in Missouri and Pennsylvania

"concept of Georgetown University Law professor Paul Ohm that we are all at the mercy of massive troves of data that businesses collect and keep on us...the 'data base of ruin'...our genomes have become them."

Published: 2020 Read: November 2024  Genre: Science

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson - Ellen Baker

What a marvelous read!  Since the realization in the public of the power of DNA to reveal secrets, more authors are incorporating it into their stories.  This book is about a family and family relationships, and what happens when the truth comes to light through DNA.  Baker is a good storyteller, alternating between two families lives and their past that brings them together in the present.  It's a story of hope and forgiveness augmented by the science of DNA.

Published: 2024   Read: July 2024   Genre: Historical fiction

The Making of the Fittest - Sean B Carroll

 Sub-title: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution

The problem with reading books about DNA is they become stale so quickly!  This one was written in 2006 and introduced me to a new author in the field.  He's written more recent books on similar topics that I'll be looking out for.  

This title makes the argument for evolution by providing scientific research and analysis.  I found it very approachable although I got lost in some of the terminology.  My primary take away was that there is a lot of evidence for evolution and DNA made those discoveries possible.  A good read.

Quotes/comments:

Term - fossil DNA

Term - the length of DNA that codes for an individual protein is called a gene

gene duplication are a common form of change in DNA

Published: 2006  Read: June 2024   Genre: Science

The Book of Brad - Monica Elizabeth Bauer

Sub-title: A comic novel about finding family

This book was a happy serendipity!  I attended the Tucson Festival of the Book and saw this book at one of the stalls.  My brother is a "Brad" and I wanted a picture of the cover.  To my delight, the author, Monica, shared that she was an adoptee who had found out she had over 50% Jewish heritage.  She had met her biological family and embraced her new found relatives.  Monica is a playwright and chose to write a book about her discovery.  But this is a different genetic genealogy story!  

Monica created a rabbi named Brad.  He's a very progressive rabbi to the Hollywood stars whose written a bestseller "The Book of Brad" to share his philosophy.  We're introduced to him just before his untimely demise while at the same time meeting his previously unknown biological daughter.  The book shares chapters from Brad's book as his daughter attempts to connect with her newly found biological family, thanks to her DNA test.  

At its heart, it's a story of the family we know, the family we find, and the family we chose. However, it's a first on the topic of DNA discoveries that tells the story in a snarky, tongue-in-cheek style that had me laughing out loud.  It was a treat to find a familiar topic with a refreshingly new twist!

You can get your own copy here: The Book of Brad: A comic novel about finding family

Published: 2023  Read: March 2024 Genre: Fiction

A Short History of Humanity - Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe

 Sub-title: A New History of Old Europe

Krause is an archaeogeneticist, an archaeologist who focuses on the ancient DNA discovered in archeological digs. His co-author, Thomas Trappe is a German health journalist.  The book re-visits previously recovered remains from ancient origins to apply the latest DNA technical analysis tools.  Using this updated information, some discoveries are reaffirmed, and others updated or revised entirely.  As explained in recent articles where ancient (13th-14th century) remains are analyzed, in some cases, entirely new discoveries are made.  The book can get a bit technical on the science used.  I was fascinated with the process and how our understanding of ancient migration patterns, languages, and diseases can be tracked using DNA.

Quotes:

p 27 "A mutation reliably appears in mtDNA only every 3,000 years on average...this means that for 3,000 years, the mtDNA passed down along a female line is identical."

p 27 "The mtDNA of all living modern human beings can be traced back to a single female ancestor...she lived around 160,000 years ago...mitochondrial Eve. A male counterpart, chromosomal Adam, lived almost 200,000 years before mitochondrial Eve however, so we can say with certainty that they weren't a couple."

p 41 "Some Europeans and many South Asians, inherited a gene that causes a much stronger immune reaction to a COVID-19 virus infection.  Carriers of the Neanderthal gene are three times more likely to die from this newly emerged virus."

p. 144 "Using DNA analysis, we were able to identify men from five consecutive generations in some family graves, but we did not find a single adult female descendant, confirming that the daughters of the families were likely sent away before they became adults.  Evidently sons, instead, inherited the farmsteads from their fathers. ..In all, this genetic data reveals patriarchal and hierarchical structures that became widespread during the Bronze Age and continue to shape some familial and social conventions even today."

p. 167..." in 2012, the US Dept. of Defense launch the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Algorithm Challenge...to develop a computer algorithm that would quickly discover and identify bacterial and viral DNA.  Daniel Huson, a specialist in bioinformatics, developed a related algorithm that could match a billion DNA sequences to their organism of origin within 24 hours..instead of weeks.

Published:  2021  Read: December 2022  Genre: History, Science

The End of Genetics - David B Goldstein

Sub-title: Designing humanity's DNA

This was a startling book, with a perspective on the use of DNA for choosing the genes of children before birth.  I marked multiple pages.  The summary is that we will be able to alter the genetics prenatal before we have established whether we should, and if we do, for what reasons.  The author points out that as of now we are a long way from knowing the consequences of such changes. He even mentions sequencing the entire population as a way to "position the country to be more resilient in the face of future global health crises".  

p.7 - "If we consider only point mutations then each child born will have its own collection of brand-new mutations...between fifty and a few hundred...distributed throughout his or her genome, with the exact number depending very strongly on the age of the father."

p. 13 - "Alistair Moffat is the former chief executive officer of Britain's DNA, a now-defunct for-profit personal genomics company.[example of ridiculous claims]"

p. 23 "...437 genes [mendelian disease] that are known to cause diseases that are severe and present in childhood if a child carries two mutations.  'Screening for such mutations in people and prospective parents is now called carrier screening'."

p. 44 "...all four thousand genes that we now know about that cause severe inherited disease follow [Mendelian] pattern of inheritance."

p.59 "...the modern Synthesis, which unites Mendelian inheritance and Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and the Central Dogma, which describe the flow of information from DNA through RNA to the proteins responsible for the diversity of organisms on earth."

p. 94 "...polygenic risk scores ..are based on the complement of common variation an individual carries."

p. 108 "There will clearly be a very substantial market among prospective parents for any tools that can ensure the non-transmissions of variants causing disease that cannot be comprehensively cured."

p. 113 "Today we know of 1,488 genes that cause disease following a dominant mode of inheritance."

p. 117 "...it has been estimated that as many as two out of every hundred people carry a disease-causing mutation in one of these 'actionable' genes."

Published: 2021  Read: August 2022  Genre: Science

Uprooted - Peter J Boni

 Sub-title: Family trauma, unknown origins, and the secretive history of artificial insemination

This was a great read.  The author discovered in his 50's that he was conceived via artificial insemination, something that was being experimented with in the 1940s when he was born. He goes on a quest to find his birth father and in the process records the history of AI and its unregulated use over decades.  

Quotes:

"Year's before, I had taken a Myers-Briggs personality test...the leadership profile, ENTJ: Extroverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging....only 2% of the population has this profile."

"Isabella [Queen of Spain] became one of the most powerful and influential European monarchs...During her reign, the International Federation of Chess, the governing authority of the game, restructured the rules.  While the king remained the most important, the queen (modeled after Queen Isabella), moved freely in any direction and became the most powerful piece on the board."

"Based on [June 1941 survey of 30,000 doctors] ...estimated that artificial insemination accounted for as many as 10,000 births, with approximately two-thirds resulting from artificial insemination by husband and one-third from an artificial insemination by donor."

"In England, in post-war 1945, Dr. Mary Bardon documented...successful artificial insemination by donor and later revealed as many as 1,500 donor-conceived children in the U.K. ...she subsequently disclosed that one anonymous donor, her husband and fellow fertility researcher Bertold Wiesner, accounted for six hundred of those children. (Wiesner occupies the number-one Wikipedia spot for having fathered the most children)." 

"The American Society for Reproductive Medicine...publishes Fertility and Sterility...recommends a series of practice standards to be followed by its fertility practitioners... "

"The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, drafted in 1968, and the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act have established standards for organ and tissue donation in the US.  Yet, there is no such governing body establishing laws and standards in the life-giving multi-billion-dollar reproduction industry.  ..[it is] totally unaddressed by US federal law."

" Professional fertility specialists generally belong to the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART).  By 1988, the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment (CLIA) required all clinical laboratory testing on humans in the U.S. to adhere to stringent standards."  

"First, a guideline is not enforceable; a law is.  Second, the free market distribution of not only sperm but also egg and embryo enables a multitude of unknowing siblings to be conceived from the same donor." 

 

Published: 2022  Read: July 2022  Genre: Memoir

A Broken Tree - Stephen F Anderson

 Sub-title: How DNA exposed a family's secrets

This is the story of the type of unexpected results that can be found with DNA testing.  The author, a long-time employee of FamilySearch, the genealogy powerhouse, suspected that he and his siblings were not all of the same parents, and DNA testing proved his suspicions.  I was struck by his seeming lack of knowledge of DNA testing for someone who worked in the genealogy industry.  He began testing of YDNA and proceeded cautiously as the years went on, being mindful of the feelings of his parents and siblings.  A mindful example of the issues that arise with DNA testing.

Published: 2019   Read: June 2022  Genre: Memoir

DNA for Native American Genealogy - Roberta Estes

 This book is a much needed volume addressing the use of DNA analysis along with genealogical research to identify and verify native american heritage.  It's divided into 6 parts:

Part 1: Seeking Native Ancestors

Part 2: Ethnicity and Population Genetics - a good explanation of how this is done

Part 3: DNA Testing

Part 4: MtDNA

Part 5: Y-DNA ancient and modern

Part 6: Roadmap and checklist

There are many tables accompanying each topic, making it an excellent reference when pursuing DNA for Native American research.  Highly recommended.

Published: 2021  Read: April 2022 Genre: Genealogy

The Genetic Lottery - Kathryn Paige Harden

Subtitle: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality

This is a very dense, detailed, well-documented treatise advocating for the analysis of DNA's impact on social and behavioral issues to improve social equality.  I think I understand and grasp some of it but much was difficult to unpack without a background in scientific research.  Her argument is that scientific evidence, namely polygenetic indexes and twin studies show that certain traits are inherited, such as education and income achievement, though they are both heavily influenced as well by environmental factors.  Given this fact, she advocates for equalizing the disparities this causes by providing social programs that acknowledge the differences due to both genetic and environmental factors.

It's a touchy subject because it's been hijacked by eugenic proponents to claim nothing can be done about social inequity if it is affected by genetics.  I was not convinced of her arguments.

Quotes and Notes:

Ploygenic indices are the human version of estimated breeding values in agriculture.

All of your genome, then, can be considered a form of luck in your life.

In 2013 journal Science published results....and found three genetic variants that were associated with educational attainment...rs9320913, rs11584700, rs4851266

...I have students practice talking about psychology studies using the following language: 'This study was about Construct X, as measured by Y.'.

..sometime between 500 and 200 BC, as the Sumerian were developing a written alphabet and Egypt's first dynasty was being established, you reach an even more remarkable point - everyone  alive then, if they left any descendants at all, was a common ancestor of everyone alive now.  If we trace our family trees back far enough, they all become one and the same.

There are on average, 33 of these recombinations events that occur every time a genome is transmitted to the next generation.  So, the 22 chromosomes that you inherited [from your father]can be broken down into 22 + 33 = 55 different chunks, each of which can be traced back to on of your two paternal grandparents.

...the U.S. Census, which began in 1790, did not allow people to pick more than one race until 2000.

Why are inequalities that are related to your genes more acceptable than inequalities rooted in the social circumstances of your birth?  After all, as I've argued...both are accidents of birth, forms of luck over which a person has no control.

[sign] Fair Isn't everybody getting the same thing, Fair is everybody getting what they need in order to be successful. 

[picture] Equality (3 people standing next to fence on same height box but people are different heights and only those tall enough can see over fence) vs. Equity (same 3 people where shorter ones stand on boxes to be the same height as tallest an all can see over the fence).

...one lesson is that figuring out which specific environments make a difference, for whom, at what point in the life span, is a harder problem than it might appear at first, because most of those environments are braided together with genetic differences between people.

[Ben Domingue, social scientist] 'genetics are a useful mechanism for understanding why people from relatively similar backgrounds end up different...but genetics is a poor tool for understanding why people from manifestly different starting points don't end up the same.'

The biggest contribution of genetics...is a set of tools to do basic research by measuring and statistically controlling for a variable - DNA

inherently valuable vs socially valued - used in describing whether a gene is good or bad based on perspective

,,,use in military of people with ASDs (autism spectrum disorders) who have heightened attention to visual detail and pattern can be put to use scanning satellite images.

I hope to start the conversation about...anti-eugenicist.  5 principles: 1) stop wasting time, money, talent and tools that could be used to improve people's lives, 2) use genetic info to improve opportunity, not classify people 3) use genetic information for equity, not exclusion 4) don't mistake being lucky for being good and 5) consider what you would do if you didn't know who you would be.

Published: 2021  Read: December 2021  Genre: Sociology 

The Codebreaker - Walter Isaacson

Sub-title: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

This was a wonderful read for so many reasons. Isaacson introduces the story by explaining the three great revolutions experienced in modern times: the industrial, the information and now, the life sciences revolution.  He compares the growth of people being able to do digital coding by manipulating bits, the on/off switches of the information technology world, to the future growth of people who will do genetic coding by editing and manipulating our DNA.  The innovators in both are those who can not only read the code but write it.

 I'd heard the term "CRISPR" and knew it had to do with DNA but didn't understand what it was.  The author took us through the life of Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize winning microbiologist whose curiosity led her from an early age to pursue RNA, the messenger part of our genetic makeup.  She won the Nobel Prize along with Emmanuelle Charpentier, for their research on how to alter our genes and how to "cut" DNA using  RNA to point to the edit point.  CRISPR -  Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats - that were discovered in the 1980s, provides this pointer to where the editing of  DNA is desired. Doudna and Charpentier showed how to use CRISPR as an editing tool. 

I was swept along in the story that wove the history of the discovery of DNA, the effort to map the human genome and the ability to edit genes with CRISPR into a coherent, understandable whole.  At the same time the author revealed the cooperation and competition among scientists and their human side as collaborators and competitors.

I was uplifted to read of their cooperation in finding ways to test for Covid-19 when it emerged in 2020 and of their dedication and single mindedness in pursuing solutions. Several chapters are devoted to explaining and exploring the ethical use of the CRISPR technology and how it might be regulated, providing thought-provoking discussion.

 I can't recommend this book enough.

Quotes:

"[from Emmanuelle Charpentier] I began to see myself as a scientist and not just as a student...I wanted to create knowledge, not just learn it."

"1998 conference at UCLA...focused on the ethics of making genetic edits that would be inherited.  These 'germline edits 'were fundamentally different, medically and morally, from somatic-cell edits that affect only certain cells in an individual patient.  The germline was a red line that scientists had been reluctant to cross."

"On most great moral issues, there are two competing perspectives.  One emphasizes individual rights, personal liberty, and deference to person choice [Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia].  The other are those that view justice and morality through the lens of what is best for the society and perhaps even the species [John Rawls's A Theory of Justice].

Notes:

"Count Me In" - public database with DNA shared by cancer patients.

1997 film Gattaca (the title is made up of the letter of the four DNA bases) told of the potential of genetic screening and selection.

Preprint servers such as Rxiv and bioRxiv, free and open publishing of scientific research papers.

Published: 2021   Read: May 2021   Genre: Science, Biography

Your DNA Guide the Book - Diahan Southard

Sub-title: Step by Step Plans to Connect you with your Family Using your DNA

Let me start by saying, I wish I had written this book! Diahan has taken her straightforward, friendly approach I've seen her utilize in her genealogy conference presentations and created a fantastic guide to all things related to DNA genealogy.  I thoroughly enjoyed that the book, while designed as a customize-able, step by step guide, is also a plain language resource for DNA  and genealogy information.  

The book has you define a DNA research goal and then guides you through a path to your goal, learning along the way.   The table of contents reads like a list of DNA research questions I've been asked many times. For an overview of the book, there is a flowchart or Map of the Plan for research on pages 19 and 20.  

This is not a straight, page turning read.  You chose the next topic based on your answers to questions about your goal.  I followed the approach for a couple of DNA cases I've worked on and was impressed on how it helped me zero in on what I had done and where I needed to go next.  

The book does not go into great detail on the science of DNA, or the evolution of genetic DNA testing but instead gives a practical, get results approach to working with your DNA matches to answer your puzzle.  I would recommend it be added to any genealogist's library.

Published: 2020  Read: January 2021  Genre: Non-fiction

Before and After - Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate

 This is the book I wanted to be written when I read the fictionalized story of the Tennessee Children's Home Society.  It's the true stories of several of the children who were adopted through the Home run by an unscrupulous woman, Georgia Tann, who for over 30 years trafficked in children with impunity.

The first three-fourths of the book are positive, upbeat stories of how the children's lives turned out well despite always having a feeling of being different.  Most were raised as only children who were adopted into well-to-do homes.  The last few stories were not so positive.  The writing was weak and I was frustrated that the writers didn't seem to attempt to research adoption or unknown parentage. I also felt that their lack of organization in pulling the adoptees together was inexcusable, as if they were just trying to promote themselves and write a book and needed the stories to pull it together.  

Published: 2019  Read: September 2020   Genre: Non-fiction

The Violinist's Thumb - Sam Kean

Sub-title: and other lost tales of Love, War, and Genius, as written by our Genetic Code

This was a delight!  I'm crazy about genetics and DNA and this science writer has a wonderful way of making complicated subjects into entertaining stories.  I'd read his debut book, The Disappearing Spoon about the periodic table of the elements in 2015.  In this book, he uses anecdotes to illustrate principles and discoveries of DNA and genetics.  The title comes from the uniquely ability of Paganini, the violin virtuoso whose thumb flexibility is attributed to a genetic mutation.  The author takes us through history and the evidence provided by DNA in a variety of settings.  Even the notes at the end of the book are great reads! 

Some quotes I marked:

"Zipfs law says that the most common word in a language appears roughly twice as often as the second most common word, roughly three times as often as the third most common word...etc.  In English the  accounts for 7 percent of words, of  for about half that, and a third of that."

"Because of the parallels between DNA and language, scientists can even analyze literary texts and genomic 'texts' with the same tools. These tools seem especially promising for analyzing disputed texts...the scientists delved into the contentious world of Shakespeare scholarship, and their software concluded that the Bard did write The Two Noble Kinsmen...but didn't write Pericles, another doubtful work." 

"mtDNA opened up whole new realms of science as well, like genetic archeology.  ...because scientists know how quickly any rare changes do accumulate in a mitochondrial line - one mutation every 3,500 year - they can use mtDNA as a clock: they compare two people's mtDNA, and the more mutations they find, the more years that have passed since the two people share a maternal ancestor.  In fact, this clock tells us that all seven billion people alive today can trace their maternal lineage to one woman who lived in Africa 170,000 years ago, dubbed 'Mitochrondrial Eve.'  Eve wasn't the only woman alive then, mind you.  She's simply the oldest matrilineal ancestor of everyone living today." 

In his notes, the author also recommended Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Robert Trumbull and Mendel's Legacy by Elof Axel Carlson.  This one is a keeper!


Published: 2012  Read: May 2018  Genre: Science

Inheritance – Sharon Moalem

Sub-title: How our genes change our lives and our lives change our genes

I got this book as a Christmas present, I think, it feeds my obsession with genealogy and DNA.  The author is an MD specializing in rare genetic and metabolic diseases.  He makes a case for studying these conditions, not only to help the patient, but as a means of discovering information that can be applied more broadly.  Of particular interest to me, is the explanation of genetic expression and epigenetics.

Genetic expression is the concept that while we may inherit a gene related to a specific disease or condition, the degree to which that disease or condition are manifest is determined by extent our genes articulate the effect.  In short, some people carrying a gene may get the related disease and others not and even others to varying intensity.

Epigenetics is the newer science examining the effect of our lifestyle and events on our genes.  Traumatic experiences of a mother as well as her diet can affect her unborn child.  There are studies that found children of parents who has experienced starvation before having children can still pass on genetic impacts.  The author defines it as “the study of changes in gene expression that result from life conditions”. 

One anecdote I enjoyed was about Dr. John Kellogg, considered a health guru in his lifetime, he lent his name to the brand.  He was an advocate for whole body vibration, or shaking the sickness out of his patients using vibration therapy.  While discredited in the past, now vibration therapy is being advocated for patients with osteoporosis because it could possibly activate the gene expression that breaks down and builds up bone.

The book provides several case studies of rare diseases that are genetically related and gets repetitive in the telling of the stories.  An interesting read with food for thought.

Published:  2014 Read:  June 2018   Genre: Science, Medicine

The Stranger in My Genes - Bill Griffeth

I've been obsessed with genealogy since retirement and this book is a perfect appetizer for that hunger.  The author is a CNBC financial news analyst who discovers via a DNA test that the father he was raised with is not his biological father. His story is a poignant revelation of the feelings, thoughts, relationships and changes experienced when these types of secrets are revealed.  He has to decide whether to confront his elderly mother; he has to re-think the family tree branch that he can no longer claim.  A great read for something that more and more people will be confronting as DNA testing continues to grow.

Published:  2016  Read: January 2017  Genre: Memoir

The Invisible History of the Human Race - Christine Kenneally

sub-title: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures

This is a hard book to describe.  It uses current DNA research to explain how the human race has evolved and how our understanding of this evolution affects our thinking and living.

I noted the following passages while reading the book over several weeks:

[Explaining why people pursue genealogy] "It's a feeling of breaking though a wall.  Of the frustration of wanting to know more about your family and your past and what people's lives were like, and where they came from, and who they were, and what their personal stories were, and feeling like you're never going to be able to uncover that.  Once you have that feeling of that great mystery, any piece of information feels like a treasure trove.  ...it's a form of connection that you though you were never going to have."

I can relate to that quote.  There's just something about connecting with my past and the people who's genes I share that is fascinating and satisfying and deepens my understanding of who I am.

[About a study that asked people to estimate how much they would change in the future]  "People have a tendency to think of the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives...dubbed the phenomenon the 'end of history illusion'.  History is always ending today."

I don't know that I agree with that statement.  If anything, I think I can always change (for the better) in the future.

[In a discussion about a study on Western values] "Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic nations (WEIRD)"

"It also made me wonder how silence is passed down".  I liked this statement.  Secrets and not-saying can also be passed down in families.

[On a Emory University study exploring the value of family history in the lives of children] "...knowledge of family history appeared to indicate how resilient the children were...it usually means that they have strong connections with mothers and grandmothers...the stories of a family add up to ... an intergenerational self."

To me, that statement makes the case for sharing family stories early and often.

"It is said that autosomal DNA [the kind Ancestry analysis uses] can take you back at least five generations.  The probability of identifying a third cousin using autosomal DNA is roughly 90 percent, a fourth cousin 50 percent, and a fifth cousin 10 percent."

The author talks about the analysis done in 2011 and 2012 by Eran Elhaik who collected historical data from DNA samples.  He now works at the University of Sheffiled and the company Prosapia Genetics has been created based on his analyses.  Prosapia claims to pinpoint the village where your ancestors came from 1,000 of years ago.  There is much controversy about its results and testing.

Another observation of the author's I liked is that DNA is a palimpsest, i.e., a layering of information on top of one another, as in medieval vellum.  "...new stories are layered over old ones, and we can learn more by understanding when and how they were written over one another.  DNA and our life experiences make our bodies palimpsests.  As we learn how to interpret the body in the context of its genetic code, we begin to understand how the hand of fate, the choices of families, and the enormous journey of DNA through deep time affect our lives right now."

Her closing thought is "Your genome is just the first hand that life deals you.  How you play it is up to you."

It was an eclectic mix of different disciplines and the application of DNA information.


Published:  2014  Read: July 2015  Genre: Science History

ISBN: 9 780670025558

The Seven Daughters of Eve - Bryan Sykes

Sub-title: The Science that reveals our genetic ancestry

I ordered this via Amazon because it was a layman's description of how mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from mother's to their children.  Daughters pass it on to their daughters and the author contends that it remains relatively unaltered for thousands of years.  The record of his research and findings was fascinating and I hope to do a mtDNA test someday.  He goes into detail of how mitochondrial genetics, classified all modern Europeans into seven haplogroups.

Like other reviewers, I thought he departed from scientific findings to fanciful interpretation in "describing" each of the seven lines of mtDNA he traced in modern populations.  It's still a compelling read for those interested in DNA research and application.

Quotes:

p. 28 - Like more familiar instruction  systems such as language, number or computer binary code what matters is not so much the symbols themselves bu the order in which they appear."

Question: what other simple instructions systems are there?

p. 71 - using mtDNA to disprove descendants of Russian czar

p. 126 - Neanderthals are not our ancestors

p. 128 - explanation of mules and why Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal may have split



Published: 2001  Read: June 2015  Genre: Science