Contributed papers presented at the Symposium; festschrift for Benjamin Peary Pal, 1906-1989, Indian agricultural scientist.

It is said that "necessity is the mother of invention". To be sure, wheels and pulleys were invented out of necessity by the tenacious minds of upright citi zens. Looking at the history of mankind, however, one has to add that "Ieisure is the mother of cultural improvement". Man's creative genius flourished only when his mind, freed from the worry of daily toils, was permitted to entertain apparently useless thoughts. In the same manner, one might say with regard to evolution that "natural selection mere(y tnodifted, while redundanry created". Natural selection has been extremely effective in policing alleHe mutations which arise in already existing gene loci. Because of natural selection, organisms have been able to adapt to changing environments, and by adaptive radiation many new species were created from a common ancestral form. Y et, being an effective policeman, natural selection is extremely conservative by nature. Had evolution been entirely dependent upon natural selection, from a bacterium only numerous forms of bacteria would have emerged. The creation of metazoans, vertebrates and finally mammals from unicellular organisms would have been quite impos sible, for such big leaps in evolution required the creation of new gene loci with previously nonexistent functions. Only the cistron which became redun dant was able to escape from the relentless pressure of natural selection, and by escaping, it accumulated formerly forbidden mutations to emerge as a new gene locus.

The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History Now includes an excerpt from Siddhartha Mukherjee’s new book Song of the Cell! From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a fascinating history of the gene and “a magisterial account of how human minds have laboriously, ingeniously picked apart what makes us tick” (Elle). “Sid Mukherjee has the uncanny ability to bring together science, history, and the future in a way that is understandable and riveting, guiding us through both time and the mystery of life itself.” —Ken Burns “Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee dazzled readers with his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies in 2010. That achievement was evidently just a warm-up for his virtuoso performance in The Gene: An Intimate History, in which he braids science, history, and memoir into an epic with all the range and biblical thunder of Paradise Lost” (The New York Times). In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices. “Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” (The Washington Post). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome. “A fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making us who we are—and what our manipulation of those genes might mean for our future” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), The Gene is the revelatory and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. “The Gene is a book we all should read” (USA TODAY).

What are genes? What do genes do? These seemingly simple questions are in fact challenging to answer accurately. As a result, there are widespread misunderstandings and over-simplistic answers, which lead to common conceptions widely portrayed in the media, such as the existence of a gene 'for' a particular characteristic or disease. In reality, the DNA we inherit interacts continuously with the environment and functions differently as we age. What our parents hand down to us is just the beginning of our life story. This comprehensive book analyses and explains the gene concept, combining philosophical, historical, psychological and educational perspectives with current research in genetics and genomics. It summarises what we currently know and do not know about genes and the potential impact of genetics on all our lives. Making Sense of Genes is an accessible but rigorous introduction to contemporary genetics concepts for non-experts, undergraduate students, teachers and healthcare professionals.

Genetically engineered (GE) crops were first introduced commercially in the 1990s. After two decades of production, some groups and individuals remain critical of the technology based on their concerns about possible adverse effects on human health, the environment, and ethical considerations. At the same time, others are concerned that the technology is not reaching its potential to improve human health and the environment because of stringent regulations and reduced public funding to develop products offering more benefits to society. While the debate about these and other questions related to the genetic engineering techniques of the first 20 years goes on, emerging genetic-engineering technologies are adding new complexities to the conversation. Genetically Engineered Crops builds on previous related Academies reports published between 1987 and 2010 by undertaking a retrospective examination of the purported positive and adverse effects of GE crops and to anticipate what emerging genetic-engineering technologies hold for the future. This report indicates where there are uncertainties about the economic, agronomic, health, safety, or other impacts of GE crops and food, and makes recommendations to fill gaps in safety assessments, increase regulatory clarity, and improve innovations in and access to GE technology.

Get the low-down on genetics with easy-to-understand terms and clear explanations. From interpreting dominant and recessive genes to learning about mutations, this book shows the different factors that can determine a person's DNA.

Recent major advances in the field of comparative genomics and cytogenomics of plants, particularly associated with the completion of ambitious genome projects, have uncovered astonishing facets of the architecture and evolutionary history of plant genomes. The aim of this book was to review these recent developments as well as their implications in our understanding of the mechanisms which drive plant diversity. New insights into the evolution of gene functions, gene families and genome size are presented, with particular emphasis on the evolutionary impact of polyploidization and transposable elements. Knowledge on the structure and evolution of plant sex chromosomes, centromeres and microRNAs is reviewed and updated. Taken together, the contributions by internationally recognized experts present a panoramic overview of the structural features and evolutionary dynamics of plant genomes.This volume of Genome Dynamics will provide researchers, teachers and students in the fields of biology and agronomy with a valuable source of current knowledge on plant genomes.