The Age Of Genomes

A leading geneticist explores what promises to be one of the most transformative advances in health and medicine in history Almost every week, another exciting headline appears about new advances in the field of genetics. Genetic testing is experiencing the kind of exponential growth once seen with the birth of the Internet, while the plummeting cost of DNA sequencing makes it increasingly accessible for individuals and families. Steven Lipkin and Jon Luoma posit that today’s genomics is like the last century’s nuclear physics: a powerful tool for good if used correctly, but potentially dangerous nonetheless. DNA testing is likely the most exciting advance in a long time for treating serious disease, but sequencing errors, complex biology, and problems properly interpreting genetic data can also cause life-threatening misdiagnoses of patients with debilitating and fatal genetic diseases. DNA testing can also lead to unnecessary procedures and significantly higher health-care costs. And just around the corner is the ability to cure genetic diseases using powerful gene-editing technologies that are already being used in human embryo research. Welcome to the Age of Genomes! The Age of Genomes immerses readers in true stories of patients on the frontier of genomic medicine and explores both the transformative potential and risks of genetic technology. It will inform anxious parents increasingly bombarded by offers of costly new prenatal testing products, and demonstrate how genetic technology, when deployed properly, can significantly improve the lives of patients who have devastating neurological diseases, cancer, and other maladies. Dr. Lipkin explains the science in depth, but in terms a layperson can follow.

Personal genome testing, gene editing for life-threatening diseases, synthetic life: once the stuff of science fiction, twentieth- and twenty-first-century advancements blur the lines between scientific narrative and scientific fact. This examination of bioengineering in popular and literary culture shows that the influence of science on science fiction is more reciprocal than we might expect. Looking closely at the work of Margaret Atwood, Richard Powers, and other authors, as well as at film, comics, and serial television such as Orphan Black, Everett Hamner shows how the genome age is transforming both the most commercial and the most sophisticated stories we tell about the core of human personhood. As sublime technologies garner public awareness beyond the genre fiction shelves, they inspire new literary categories like “slipstream” and shape new definitions of the human, the animal, the natural, and the artificial. In turn, what we learn of bioengineering via popular and literary culture prepares the way for its official adoption or restriction—and for additional representations. By imagining the connections between emergent gene testing and editing capacities and long-standing conversations about freedom and determinism, these stories help build a cultural zeitgeist with a sharper, more balanced vision of predisposed agency. A compelling exploration of the interrelationships among science, popular culture, and self, Editing the Soul sheds vital light on what the genome age means to us, and what’s to come.

Genomic technologies have had a profound impact on understandings of what it means to be human and our links to the world we inhabit, and on practices of inhabiting the world. This book considers this impact across a range of literary forms, cultural practices, and political imaginaries, and argues that new descriptions of biological value introduced through practices of genomic sequencing from the late 1970s registered a broader crisis of narrative form. Examining a wide range of texts by Doris Lessing, Samuel Delany, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Kir Bulychev, Kazuo Ishiguro, Saidiya Hartman, Yaa Gyasi, Svetlana Alexievich, and Jeff VanderMeer, Narrative in the Age of the Genome casts new light on the intersections of genomics with politics of racism, sexuality, labour and gender, neoliberal economics and environmental crisis.

In the summer of 1991, population geneticists and evolutionary biologists proposed to archive human genetic diversity by collecting the genomes of "isolated indigenous populations." Their initiative, which became known as the Human Genome Diversity Project, generated early enthusiasm from those who believed it would enable huge advances in our understanding of human evolution. However, vocal criticism soon emerged. Physical anthropologists accused Project organizers of reimporting racist categories into science. Indigenous-rights leaders saw a "Vampire Project" that sought the blood of indigenous people but not their well-being. More than a decade later, the effort is barely off the ground. How did an initiative whose leaders included some of biology's most respected, socially conscious scientists become so stigmatized? How did these model citizen-scientists come to be viewed as potential racists, even vampires? This book argues that the long abeyance of the Diversity Project points to larger, fundamental questions about how to understand knowledge, democracy, and racism in an age when expert claims about genomes increasingly shape the possibilities for being human. Jenny Reardon demonstrates that far from being innocent tools for fighting racism, scientific ideas and practices embed consequential social and political decisions about who can define race, racism, and democracy, and for what ends. She calls for the adoption of novel conceptual tools that do not oppose science and power, truth and racist ideologies, but rather draw into focus their mutual constitution.

The recent revolution in molecular biology has spread through every field of biology including systematics and evolution. Researchers can now analyze the genomes of different species relatively quickly, and this is generating a great deal of data and theories about relationships between taxa as well as how they originated and diversified. Org

Recent studies have indicated that epigenetic processes may play a major role in both cellular and organismal aging. These epigenetic processes include not only DNA methylation and histone modifications, but also extend to many other epigenetic mediators such as the polycomb group proteins, chromosomal position effects, and noncoding RNA. The topics of this book range from fundamental changes in DNA methylation in aging to the most recent research on intervention into epigenetic modifications to modulate the aging process. The major topics of epigenetics and aging covered in this book are: 1) DNA methylation and histone modifications in aging; 2) Other epigenetic processes and aging; 3) Impact of epigenetics on aging; 4) Epigenetics of age-related diseases; 5) Epigenetic interventions and aging: and 6) Future directions in epigenetic aging research. The most studied of epigenetic processes, DNA methylation, has been associated with cellular aging and aging of organisms for many years. It is now apparent that both global and gene-specific alterations occur not only in DNA methylation during aging, but also in several histone alterations. Many epigenetic alterations can have an impact on aging processes such as stem cell aging, control of telomerase, modifications of telomeres, and epigenetic drift can impact the aging process as evident in the recent studies of aging monozygotic twins. Numerous age-related diseases are affected by epigenetic mechanisms. For example, recent studies have shown that DNA methylation is altered in Alzheimer’s disease and autoimmunity. Other prevalent diseases that have been associated with age-related epigenetic changes include cancer and diabetes. Paternal age and epigenetic changes appear to have an effect on schizophrenia and epigenetic silencing has been associated with several of the progeroid syndromes of premature aging. Moreover, the impact of dietary or drug intervention into epigenetic processes as they affect normal aging or age-related diseases is becoming increasingly feasible.

The year 2001 marked more than just the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey, it marked the beginning of the genome era. That was the year scientists first read the 3 billion letters of DNA that make up the human genome. This was followed by a veritable Noah's Ark of genomesandmdash;sponges and worms, dogs and cows, rice and wheat, chimps and elephantsandmdash;180 creatures aboard so far. So what have we learned from all this? How has it changed the way we practise medicine, grow crops and breed livestock? What have we learned about evolution? These are the questions science writer and molecular biologist Elizabeth Finkel asked herself four years ago. To find the answers she travelled the science frontier from Botswana to Boston, from Warracknabeal to Mexico and tracked down scientists working in the field. Their stories, told here, paint the picture of what it means to be part of the genome generation. 'The Genome Generation is absolutely riveting. These tales from the frontier are a 'must read' for everyone who wishes to understand our pastandmdash;the logic of evolutionandmdash;or take a peep into our exciting future at the creation of 'super plants' through 'digital agriculture'.'andmdash;R.A. Mashelkar, CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow and India President, Global Research Alliance

Aging has long since been ascribed to the gradual accumulation of DNA mutations in the genome of somatic cells. However, it is only recently that the necessary sophisticated technology has been developed to begin testing this theory and its consequences. Vijg critically reviews the concept of genomic instability as a possible universal cause of aging in the context of a new, holistic understanding of genome functioning in complex organisms resulting from recent advances in functional genomics and systems biology. It provides an up-to-date synthesis of current research, as well as a look ahead to the design of strategies to retard or reverse the deleterious effects of aging. This is particularly important in a time when we are urgently trying to unravel the genetic component of aging-related diseases. Moreover, there is a growing public recognition of the imperative of understanding more about the underlying biology of aging, driven by continuing demographic change.