If you are interested in learning more about junk DNA here's some links to relevant information.
Prologue Chapter 1: Introducing Genomes Chapter 2: The Evolution of Sloppy Genomes Chapter 3: Repetitive DNA and Mobile Genetic Elements Chapter 4: Why Don't Mutations Kill Us? Chaper 5: The Big Picture Chapter 6: How Many Genes? How Many Proteins? Chapter 7: Gene Families and the Birth and Death of Genes Chapter 8: Noncoding Genes and Junk RNA Chapter 9: The ENCODE Publicity Campaign Chapter 10: Turning Genes On and Off Chapter 11: Zen and the Art of Coping with a Sloppy Genome
10 comments :
Hey Lawrence, I am not a scientist but I am very interested in this subject so I ordered this book. Excited to read it!
I have the book on Kindle (thank you if you had a hand in making it available in that form - I don't know whether you're involved in that decision or if it's purely up to the publisher) and am eagerly anticipating reading it. You're either next or second in the queue behind the book I'm reading currently, David Quammen's "Breathless," about the COVID pandemic.
I've been quite lucky in my non-fiction reading lately - Nick Lane's "Transformer" (thank you for the recommendation), followed by Ed Yong's "An Immense World" about sensory perception in the animal world, and then Quammen's "Breathless" (the latter two authors are appearing at a literary festival I'm attending this weekend). Then I'll look forward to reading your book, either immediately afterward or after a "palate cleanser" of some science fiction I can get through quickly.
I agree with judmarc about being happy about availability of the Kindle option. I’m on page 131 after buying it yesterday. I’ve learned quite a bit. Glad you provided the tidbit on syncytin-1 in relation to ERVs. I had read about it elsewhere and was like “Wait…what!” Fascinating.
There was a bit of transposed text in my version that got excised from page 86 and moved to page 88 (Kindle pagination). The chopped section reads “…were junk, and it’s clearly not what you would expect if most of their genomes were conserved by negative selection.” Or maybe the intervening section “TICK, TOCK, THE MOLECULAR CLOCK” is an informative box or tidbit that is easier to recognize in the print version formatting.
@Hemidactylus
Yes, the molecular clock bit is a separate box that's clearly marked in the print edition (shaded, different font). Is it not obvious in the kindle version?
@ Larry Moran
I usually read in dark mode with white font, so I changed to different color schemes and fonts and still didn’t detect the molecular clock bit as noticeably different from the rest. Once I figured it out I realized I where the two sections were split. It seems the few lines of text that were split off could fit before the molecular clock section. I haven’t yet noticed where other informative boxes have disrupted my reading flow. Just a quirk of how the Kindle version got published I suppose. I’m reading it on a Kindle app on both my iPhone and iPad. The Kindle ereaders or Fire tablet may treat the text differently.
@Hemidactylus
Interesting. It's not an issue in the print version so we didn't waste any time trying to fit the two lines on page 88. I guess nobody thought that the electronic version would be different.
‘Transposon’ first appears in the book some while before the term is defined. The definition/explanation occurs at an appropriate point, but I think it would be nice to have it in italics, perhaps followed by a parenthetical saying “We’ll learn about transposons in Chapter….”
‘Metaphase’ is used and hasn’t yet been defined at the point I’ve gotten to. It’s easy enough to look up for those of us who don’t recall our high school biology, and I imagine if you started defining every such term there’d be no end, but just thought I’d note that yes, I’d forgotten (high school was 50 years ago) and had to look it up.
Apologies for commenting anonymously above, that was from me.
Great book, Larry. I am just now reading! FYI there is a typo on page 9. You are referring to figure 1.2 and the sentence as printed reads "Thus, the DNA shown in the figure has the sequecne AGTC [sic] and not CTGA even if you turn it upside down." When I look at figure 1.2 I see the sequence 5'-ATGC-3'. Anyway, super minor erratum - flipping of the T and G in order. But, I thought this might cause some confusion for the uninitiated.
Cheers,
Kristopher Hite
@tompainesghost
Good catch! I'll fix in the next printing, if there is one.
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