ADDENDA Object obscura: powered toothbrush


This ‘Kavor’ hydraulically powered toothbrush was manufactured around 1932 by Jenkins Productions Ltd of Dereham, Norfolk. The first practical electric toothbrush – the Broxodent – was invented in 1954 by Dr Phillippe Woog in Switzerland.


Book review: The Gene: An Intimate History


By Siddhartha Mukherjee Bodley Head, £25 hardcover Review by Jim Killgore, managing editor


“IT has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.” This example of “supreme understatement” can be found in the 1953 Nature article by James Watson and Francis Crick detailing the molecular structure of DNA and it is just one towering milestone celebrated in Siddhartha Mukherjee’s artful new “intimate history” of the science of genetics. Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia


Crossword 2


1 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 20


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18 19 15 3 4 5 6 7


University and a stem cell biologist and cancer geneticist. He is also a talented science writer and his The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011. This new book is “intimate” first in its focus on key personalities involved in the epic discovery and elucidation of the gene, from the early observations of inborn “likeness” by Greek scholars to the meticulous work of the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel demonstrating inheritance in pea plants (carried out at the same time as Darwin postulated his theories of evolution through natural selection) to further work on genetic traits in the fruit fly by cell biologist Thomas Morgan and the subsequent search for the “missing” biochemical mechanism that makes it all possible, in which Watson and Crick were so instrumental. “Message; movement; information; form; Darwin; Mendel;


Morgan: all was writ into that precarious assemblage of molecules.” Mukherjee’s history is also intimate in his account of the


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interplay of genetics in his own family where there is a history of schizophrenia, such that he felt compelled to inform his fiancée. “It was only fair... that I should come with a letter of warning.” The structure of the book is chronological, covering the major


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ACROSS 1 Betrothed (7) 5 Incontrovertible principles of faith (5)


8 Politician, piece of paper in hand (11)


9 Record label, owner of Abbey Road Studios (3)


10 Scarlet resinous secretion from insects (3)


11 Grouped according to ethnicity or allegiance (6)


14 Curve upwards in the middle (6) 15 Without elegance or grace (adverb) (6)


17 Prevents vessel from drifting (6) 18 Medical workplace or dog (abbr.) (3)


20 Rest upon one’s posterior (3) 22 Assumed traits based on ethnicity or religion (11)


24 Violent spasm or pang (5) 25 Dogs, humans and whales (7)


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DOWN 1 Perform beyond expectations (5) 2 Pressure build-up in eye (8) 3 Intermediary (2-7) 4 Proponent of evolution by natural selection (6)


5 Long polymer containing genetic code of lifeforms (3)


6 Basic functional unit of heredity, made from 5 (4)


7 Nervousness (7) 12 Set of rules for calculation (9) 13 Double vision (8) 14 Permission (7) 16 Secretion of mucus, bacteria and debris (6)


19 Plays music outdoors for small change (5)


21 Person appointed by government to advise on policy (4)


23 To supplement with great effort (3)


See answers online at www.mddus.com/news/notice-board 22


developments in genetics by scientists working in partnership or competition or sometimes – as with Mendel – in painful isolation. Mendel’s seminal paper was not “rediscovered” until 1900, after his death, by the English biologist William Bateson who later wrote: “When power is discovered, man will always turn to it…The science of heredity will soon provide power on a stupendous scale.” It is a prescient observation that Mukherjee explores in the latter part of the book, looking at the growth of biotechnology, the vast and “dangerous” potential of recombinant DNA, gene therapy and the sequencing of the entire human genome, recording our evolutionary history in the carcasses of inactivated genes “littered throughout its length, like fossils decaying on a beach”. This is a profound and engrossing book.


SUMMONS


PHOTOGRAPH: SCIENCE MUSEUM/SCIENCE & SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY


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