Oswald Avery And The Story Of Dna

A biography of the Canadian-born bacteriologist whose research on pneumonia and other bacteria led to a new understanding of DNA which, in turn, led to DNA fingerprinting in criminal investigation, paternity testing, and genetic engineering for medical purposes.

Oswald Theodore Avery is little known outside of the scientific community. Yet, this extraordinary man, here brought vividly to life by a perceptive friend and sophisticated scientific colleague, was a monumental force in the development of medical research in the United States. Even among scientists, Avery is known chiefly as the senior author of a paper published in 1944 that identified DNA as the purveyor of genetic information. Two things make this highly personalized biography a landmark volume. First, its technical chapters clarify the philosophical concepts that lie behind today's understanding of the immunology of bacterial infection. Second, not a single existing textbook has ever described the laborious methods by which the men in Avery's laboratory discovered the genetic import of DNA.

Forty years ago, three medical researchers--Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty--made the discovery that DNA is the genetic material. With this finding was born the modern era of molecular biology and genetics.

DNA. The double helix; the blueprint of life; and, during the early 1950s, a baffling enigma that could win a Nobel Prize. Everyone knows that James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix. In fact, they clicked into place the last piece of a huge jigsaw puzzle that other researchers had assembled over decades. Researchers like Maurice Wilkins (the 'Third Man of DNA') and Rosalind Franklin, famously demonised by Watson. Not forgetting the 'lost heroes' who fought to prove that DNA is the stuff of genes, only to be airbrushed out of history. In Unravelling the Double Helix, Professor Gareth Williams sets the record straight. He tells the story of DNA in the round, from its discovery in pus-soaked bandages in 1868 to the aftermath of Watson's best-seller The Double Helix a century later. You don't need to be a scientist to enjoy this book. It's a page-turner that unfolds like a detective story, with suspense, false leads and treachery, and a fabulous cast of noble heroes and back-stabbing villains. But beware: some of the science is dreadful, and the heroes and villains may not be the ones you expect.

Now completely up-to-date with the latest research advances, the Seventh Edition retains the distinctive character of earlier editions. Twenty-two concise chapters, co-authored by six highly distinguished biologists, provide current, authoritative coverage of an exciting, fast-changing discipline.

This invaluable book contains 36 interviews, including 26 with Nobel laureates. It presents a cross-section of biomedical science, a field that has been dominant in science for the past half century. The in-depth conversations cover important research areas and discoveries, as well as the roads to these discoveries, including aspects of the scientists' work that never saw publication. They also bring out the humanness of the famous scientists — the reader learns about their backgrounds, aspirations, failings, and triumphs. The book is illustrated with snapshots of the conversations and photos provided by the interviewees. It is a follow-up to the critically acclaimed Candid Science: Conversations with Famous Chemists, by the same author. Contents: James D WatsonMaclyn McCartyJoshua LederbergArthur KornbergFrederick SangerFrançois JacobWalter Gilbert Benno Müller-HillMarshall W NirenbergDaniel NathansPaul Berg Kary B MullisGerald M EdelmanCésar MilsteinAlfred G GilmanGünter BlobelGeorge K RaddaMax F PerutzRichard HendersonAaron KlugJohn T FinchSidney AltmanEdward B LewisRita Levi-MontalciniLars ErnsterTorvard C LaurentGeorge KleinD Carleton GajdusekCharles WeissmannFrederick C RobbinsRosalyn YalowJames W BlackK Sune D BergströmJohn R VaneSalvador MoncadaRobert F Furchgott Readership: Biomedical scientists, biochemists, and general readers. Reviews:“The book is easy to read … Overall, they give an accurate flavor of biomedical research …”Choice “The present selection of interviews gives a cross section covering a broad range of topics, personalities, and circumstances of recording. I agree with Hargittai's evaluation and heartily recommend his book, suitable for both complete reading or browsing, to biomedical scientists, biochemists, chemists, historians of chemistry and or science, and general readers interested in the 'inside story' of the workings of 20th-century science.”The Chemical Educator “I heartily recommend this book, suitable for both complete reading or browsing, to biomedical scientists, biochemists, chemists, historians of chemistry and of science generally, and general readers interested in the 'inside story' of the workings of 20th-century science.”Chemical Heritage

The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History Now includes an excerpt from Siddhartha Mukherjee’s new book Song of the Cell! From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a fascinating history of the gene and “a magisterial account of how human minds have laboriously, ingeniously picked apart what makes us tick” (Elle). “Sid Mukherjee has the uncanny ability to bring together science, history, and the future in a way that is understandable and riveting, guiding us through both time and the mystery of life itself.” —Ken Burns “Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee dazzled readers with his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies in 2010. That achievement was evidently just a warm-up for his virtuoso performance in The Gene: An Intimate History, in which he braids science, history, and memoir into an epic with all the range and biblical thunder of Paradise Lost” (The New York Times). In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices. “Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” (The Washington Post). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome. “A fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making us who we are—and what our manipulation of those genes might mean for our future” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), The Gene is the revelatory and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. “The Gene is a book we all should read” (USA TODAY).