Like humans, flies learn and remember, fight microbial infection, and slow down as they age. A single species of fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been the subject of scientific research for more than one hundred years. Scientists use drosophila to investigate complex biological activities in a simple but intact living system.
Fly research provides answers to some of the most challenging questions in biology and biomedicine, and how we can develop effective treatments for cancer, diabetes, including how cells transmit signals and form ordered structures, how we can interpret the wealth of human genome data now available, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Written by a leader in the Drosophila research community, First in Fly celebrates key insights uncovered by investigators using this model organism. Stephanie elizabeth mohr draws on these “first in fly” findings to introduce fundamental biological concepts gained over the last century and explore how research in the common fruit fly has expanded our understanding of human health and disease.
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She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
Charles darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, our height, but most of our DNA influences who we are—our appearance, our penchants—in inconceivably subtle ways.
Heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. 2019 pen/e. O.
Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life
. They first created "standard" flies through inbreeding and by organizing a network for exchanging stocks of flies that spread their practices around the world. Kohler also explores the moral economy of the "Drosophilists": the rules for regulating access to research tools, allocating credit for achievements, and transferring authority from one generation of scientists to the next.
He shows that the fly was essentially a laboratory tool whose startling productivity opened many new lines of genetic research. In lords of the Fly, Robert E. By closely examining the Drosophilists' culture and customs, Kohler reveals essential features of how experimental scientists do their work.
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
In who we are and how we got here, reich allows readers to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo needs to develop but also the hidden story of our species. Provocatively, reich’s book suggests that there might very well be biological differences among human populations but that these differences are unlikely to conform to common stereotypes.
Drawing upon revolutionary findings and unparalleled scientific studies, Who We Are and How We Got Here is a captivating glimpse into humankind—where we came from and what that says about our lives today. Reich delves into how the genomic revolution is transforming our understanding of modern humans and how DNA studies reveal deep inequalities among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals.
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The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy
At eight-feet high and 24 feet long, the specimen was spectacular, and when the gavel sounded the winning bid was over $1 million. Bataar, a close cousin to the most famous animal that ever lived. In her first book, and millennia as she examines the question of who, Paige Williams has given readers an irresistible story that spans continents, cultures, ultimately, owns the past.
In this 2018 new york times notable book, crime, paige williams "does for fossils what Susan Orlean did for orchids" Book Riot in her account of one Florida man's attempt to sell a dinosaur skeleton from Mongolia--a story "steeped in natural history, human nature, commerce, science, and politics" Rebecca Skloot.
A story that stretches from florida's land o' lakes to the gobi desert, where the lines between poacher and hunter, sometimes risky business, collector and smuggler, populated by eccentrics and obsessives, enthusiast and opportunist, The Dinosaur Artist illuminates the history of fossil collecting--a murky, can easily blur.
In the tradition of the orchid thief, the Dinosaur Artist is a stunning work of narrative journalism about humans' relationship with natural history and a seemingly intractable conflict between science and commerce. In 2012, a new york auction catalogue boasted an unusual offering: "a superb Tyrannosaurus skeleton.
In fact, lot 49135 consisted of a nearly complete T.
Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
. The story of nobel prize–winning discoveries regarding the molecular mechanisms controlling the body’s circadian rhythm. How much of our fate is decided before we are born? which of our characteristics is inscribed in our DNA? Weiner brings us into Benzer's Fly Rooms at the California Institute of Technology, often astonishing ones, where Benzer, and his asssociates are in the process of finding answers, to these questions.
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What the Future Looks Like: Scientists Predict the Next Great Discoveries―and Reveal How Today’s Breakthroughs Are Already Shaping Our World
The future they conjure is by turns tantalizing and sobering: There’s plenty to look forward to, but also plenty to dread. Science fact, not science fiction, on the cutting–edge developments that are already changing the course of our future Every day, scientists conduct pioneering experiments with the potential to transform how we live.
And undoubtedly the best way to for us to face tomorrow’s greatest challenges is to learn what the future looks like—today.
Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome
But this is also a human story of ramakrishnan's unlikely journey, from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being the dark horse in a fierce competition with some of the world's best scientists. Gene machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases.
But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. In the end, gene machine is a frank insider's account of the pursuit of high-stakes science. It is the ribosome--an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms--that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us.
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The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
Thanks to new technologies such as crISPR, we now have the ability to alter even our genetic composition—through sideways insertions, as nature has long been doing. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important. The tangled tree is a brilliant guide to our transformed understanding of evolution, of life’s history, and of our own human nature.
He is simply astonishing, one of that rare class of writer gifted with verve, guts, ingenuity, humor, and great heart” Elle. In the tangled tree david quammen, the notorious maverick whose wild ideas about “mosaic” creatures proved to be true; and tsutomu wantanabe, “one of that rare breed of science journalists who blends exploration with a talent for synthesis and storytelling” Nature, the most important little-known biologist of the twentieth century; Lynn Margulis, who discovered that the scourge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a direct result of horizontal gene transfer, chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them—such as Carl Woese, bringing the deep study of genome histories to bear on a global crisis in public health.
Quammen is no ordinary writer. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection—a type of HGT. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life.
Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer HGT, or the movement of genes across species lines.
Close Encounters with Humankind: A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species
Close encounters with humankind is the perfect read for anyone curious about where we came from and what it took to get us here. As we mine the evolutionary path to the present, Lee helps us to determine where we are heading and tackles one of our most pressing scientific questions―does humanity continue to evolve? 17 photographs.
For example, our big brains may have served to set our species apart and spur our societal development, but perhaps not in the ways we have often assumed. By combining anthropological insight with exciting, cutting-edge research, Lee’s surprising conclusions shed new light on our beginnings and connect us to a faraway past.
One of smithsonian's ten best science books of 2018 In this captivating bestseller, Korea’s first paleoanthropologist offers fresh insights into humanity’s dawn and evolution. What can fossilized teeth tell us about the life expectancy of our ancient ancestors? how did farming play a problematic role in the history of human evolution? How can simple geometric comparisons of skull and pelvic fossils suggest a possible origin to our social nature? And what do we truly have in common with the Neanderthals? In this captivating international bestseller, Close Encounters with Humankind, Sang-Hee Lee, Korea’s first paleoanthropologist, explores some of our greatest evolutionary questions from new and unexpected angles.
Through a series of entertaining, bite-sized chapters, we gain fresh perspectives into our first hominin ancestors and ways to challenge perceptions about the traditional progression of evolution.
Deep Homology?: Uncanny Similarities of Humans and Flies Uncovered by Evo-Devo
Written in an engaging style with a reference section listing thousands of relevant publications, this is a vital resource for scientific researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students. Remnants of the operating system of our hypothetical common ancestor 600 million years ago are compared in chapters arranged by region of the body, from the nervous system, to vision, limbs and heart, hearing and smell.
. Cambridge university press. Here, Lewis I. Humans and flies look nothing alike, yet their genetic circuits are remarkably similar.