This newly updated edition sheds light on the secrets of the sequence, highlighting the myriad ways in which genomics will impact human health for generations to come.

There is growing enthusiasm in the scientific community about the prospect of mapping and sequencing the human genome, a monumental project that will have far-reaching consequences for medicine, biology, technology, and other fields. But how will such an effort be organized and funded? How will we develop the new technologies that are needed? What new legal, social, and ethical questions will be raised? Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome is a blueprint for this proposed project. The authors offer a highly readable explanation of the technical aspects of genetic mapping and sequencing, and they recommend specific interim and long-range research goals, organizational strategies, and funding levels. They also outline some of the legal and social questions that might arise and urge their early consideration by policymakers.

“Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the reductionist danger in equating inheritability with inevitability.” — The New Yorker The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Matt Ridley’s Genome is the book that explains it all: what it is, how it works, and what it portends for the future Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.

Heritable human genome editing - making changes to the genetic material of eggs, sperm, or any cells that lead to their development, including the cells of early embryos, and establishing a pregnancy - raises not only scientific and medical considerations but also a host of ethical, moral, and societal issues. Human embryos whose genomes have been edited should not be used to create a pregnancy until it is established that precise genomic changes can be made reliably and without introducing undesired changes - criteria that have not yet been met, says Heritable Human Genome Editing. From an international commission of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.'s Royal Society, the report considers potential benefits, harms, and uncertainties associated with genome editing technologies and defines a translational pathway from rigorous preclinical research to initial clinical uses, should a country decide to permit such uses. The report specifies stringent preclinical and clinical requirements for establishing safety and efficacy, and for undertaking long-term monitoring of outcomes. Extensive national and international dialogue is needed before any country decides whether to permit clinical use of this technology, according to the report, which identifies essential elements of national and international scientific governance and oversight.

In recent years there have been tremendous achievements made in DNA sequencing technologies and corresponding innovations in data analysis and bioinformatics that have revolutionized the field of genome analysis.In this book, an impressive array of expert authors highlight and review current advances in genome analysis. This volume provides an invaluable, up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the methods currently employed for next-generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis, highlights their problems and limitations, demonstrates the applications and indicates the developing trends in various fields of genome research. The first part of the book is devoted to the methods and applications that arose from, or were significantly advanced by, NGS technologies: the identification of structural variation from DNA-seq data; whole-transcriptome analysis and discovery of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) from RNA-seq data; motif finding in promoter regions, enhancer prediction and nucleosome sequence code discovery from ChiP-Seq data; identification of methylation patterns in cancer from MeDIP-seq data; transposon identification in NGS data; metagenomics and metatranscriptomics; NGS of viral communities; and causes and consequences of genome instabilities. The second part is devoted to the field of RNA biology with the last three chapters devoted to computational methods of RNA structure prediction including context-free grammar applications.An essential book for everyone involved in sequence data analysis, next-generation sequencing, high-throughput sequencing, RNA structure prediction, bioinformatics and genome analysis.