Kevin Davies

"Philip Treacy" de Kevin Davies proporciona un retrato único y unos los estudios fantásticos, definición de espectáculos y diseños icónicos detrás de las escenas de uno de los modistas más famoso e i

En 1953, James Watson y Francis Crick descubrieron la estructura de la doble hélice del ADN. Este descubrimiento, que les valió el premio Nobel, constituyó un momento capital en la historia de la genetica, pero no permitio descifrar los mensajes que contienen esas cadenas en espiral que se encuentran en el interior de nuestras celulas. Nadie sabia cual era exactamente la secuencia del genoma humano. Nadie habia descifrado el codigo de la vida. Ahora, al empezar el nuevo milenio, este codigo ha sido descifrado. Kevin Davies, director y fundador de la revista Nature Genetics, ha seguido el desarrollo de esta aventura paso a paso, semana a semana, durante diez años. Y ahora nos presenta -por primera vez y con toda riqueza de detalles humanos, cientificos y economicos- el espectacular relato de uno de los mayores logros de la historia de la ciencia: el mapa del genoma humano. Davies ha sabido expresar toda la fascinacion de este logro memorable basandose en su propia experiencia en el campo de la genetica y en entrevistas realizadas a los principales cientificos implicados en la cuestion. Tambien ha visitado a genetistas de todo el mundo para ilustrar convenientemente esta inmensa iniciativa a escala internacional en las fronteras del conocimiento humano. Y asi el libro termina siendo una cronica insuperable de la obtencion del codigo que contiene todas las respuestas necesarias para conocer el origen de la vida, la evolucion de la humanidad y el futuro de la medicina.

In this essential guide to the brave new future, Dr. Kevin Davies, author of Cracking the Genome, reveals the masterful ingenuity that transformed the process of decoding DNA and vividly brings the extraordinary drama of the grand scientific achievement to life.In 2000, President Bill Clinton signaled the completion of the Human Genome Project at a cost in excess of $2 billion. A decade later, the price for any of us to order our own personal genome sequencea comprehensive map of the 3 billion letters in our DNAhad already dropped to just $1,000. Dozens of men and womenscientists, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and patientshave already been sequenced, pioneering a bold new era of personalized genomic medicine. The $1,000 genome has long been considered the tipping point that would open the floodgates to this revolution.How has this astonishing achievement been accomplished? To research the story of this unfolding revolution, critically acclaimed science writer Kevin Davies traveled to the leading centers and interviewed the entrepreneurs and pioneers in the race to achieve the $1,000 genome. Davies also profiles the future of genomic medicine and thoughtfully explores the many pressing issues raised by the tidal wave of personal genetic information.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA. The discovery was a profound, Nobel Prize-winning moment in the history of genetics, but it did not decipher the messages on the twisted, ladderlike strands within our cells. No one knew what the human genome sequence actually was. No one had cracked the code of life. Now, at the beginning of a new millennium, that code has been cracked. Kevin Davies, founding editor of the leading journal in the field, Nature Genetics, has relentlessly followed the story as it unfolded, week by week, for ten years. Here for the first time, in rich human, scientific, and financial detail, is the dramatic story of one of the greatest scientific feats ever accomplished: the mapping of the human genome. In 1990, the U.S. government approved a 15-year, $3 billion plan to launch the Human Genome Project, whose goal was to sequence the 3 billion letters of human DNA. At the helm of the project was James Watson, who resigned after only a couple of years, following a feud with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Bernadine Healy over gene patenting. His successor was the brilliant young medical geneticist Francis Collins, who had made his name discovering the gene for cystic fibrosis. As Davies reports, Collins is a devout Christian who has traveled to Africa to work in a missionary hospital. He believes the human genome sequence is "the language of God." Just as Collins became project director, J. Craig Venter, a maverick DNA sequencer and Vietnam veteran, was leaving the NIH to start his own private research institute. Venter had developed a simple "shotgun" strategy for sequencing DNA, and his fame skyrocketed when his new institute proved his sequencing system worked by becoming the first to sequence the entire genome of a microorganism. Only 3 percent of the human genome had been sequenced by early 1998, the public projects halfway point. That same year, Venter was approached by PE Corporation to launch a private human genome project. He stunned the world when he announced the formation of a new company to sequence the human genome in a mere three years for $300 million. A war of words broke out between public and private researchers. Undeterred, Venter built Celera Genomics with the motto "Speed matters. Discovery cant wait." and an $80 million supercomputer. While the insults intensified, Celeras stock price soared, tumbled, and soared again. Negotiations for cooperation between the public and private institutes began, only to fall apart in acrimony. Then in the spring of 2000 President Clinton stepped in, telling his science adviser to restart negotiations. History was about to be made. Davies captures the drama of this momentous achievement, drawing on his own genetics expertise and interviews with key scientists including Venter and Collins, as well as Eric Lander, an MIT computer wizard who refers to the public genome project as "the forces of good"; Kari Stefansson, the genetics entrepreneur who is remaking Icelands economy; and John Sulston, chief of the UK genome project, who led the charge against gene patenting. Davies has visited geneticists around the world to illustrate a vast international enterprise working on the frontier of human knowledge. Cracking the Genome is the definitive account of how the code that holds the answers to the origin of life, the evolution of humanity, and the future of medicine was broken.