Did the Twelve Tribes of Israel really exist? Are the scattered groups of modern Jews really the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews of the Bible? This extraordinary book chronicles the latest discoveries in the cutting-edge field of Molecular Population Genetics that add empirical evidence and scientific confirmation to Biblical tradition.

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. Illustrations by Stephen Crotts

A more comprehensive version of evolutionary theory that focuses as much on the origin of biological form as on its diversification. The field of evolutionary biology arose from the desire to understand the origin and diversity of biological forms. In recent years, however, evolutionary genetics, with its focus on the modification and inheritance of presumed genetic programs, has all but overwhelmed other aspects of evolutionary biology. This has led to the neglect of the study of the generative origins of biological form. Drawing on work from developmental biology, paleontology, developmental and population genetics, cancer research, physics, and theoretical biology, this book explores the multiple factors responsible for the origination of biological form. It examines the essential problems of morphological evolution—why, for example, the basic body plans of nearly all metazoans arose within a relatively short time span, why similar morphological design motifs appear in phylogenetically independent lineages, and how new structural elements are added to the body plan of a given phylogenetic lineage. It also examines discordances between genetic and phenotypic change, the physical determinants of morphogenesis, and the role of epigenetic processes in evolution. The book discusses these and other topics within the framework of evolutionary developmental biology, a new research agenda that concerns the interaction of development and evolution in the generation of biological form. By placing epigenetic processes, rather than gene sequence and gene expression changes, at the center of morphological origination, this book points the way to a more comprehensive theory of evolution.

Animal Traditions maintains that the assumption that the selection of genes supplies both a sufficient explanation of the evolution and a true description of its course is, despite its almost universal acclaim, wrong. Eytan Avital and Eva Jablonka contend that evolutionary explanations must take into account the well-established fact that in mammals and birds, the transfer of learnt information is both ubiquitous and indispensable. The introduction of the behavioural inheritance system into the Darwinian explanatory scheme enables the authors to offer new interpretations for common behaviours such as maternal behaviours, behavioural conflicts within families, adoption and helping. This approach offers a richer view of heredity and evolution, integrates developmental and evolutionary processes, suggests new lines for research, and provides a constructive alternative to both the selfish gene and meme views of the world. It will make stimulating reading for all those interested in evolutionary biology, sociobiology, behavioural ecology and psychology.

Traditional knowledge protection methods are becoming increasingly out-dated in the face of modern challenges. Focusing on the protection of traditional knowledge and related genetic resources, this book is the first of its kind to amalgamate a novel theoretical framework with the practical applications of the combined theories of Rawls and Coase.

The International Complete Collection of R&D Information about Traditional Chinese Materia Medica (TCMM) and Biotechnology (BT) Enterprises is designed as an informative medicinal reference directory listing of up-to-date R&D information about TCMM, medical biotechnology, and related medical equipment companies. The focus of this valuable and practical directory is on providing a comprehensive coverage of the most recent developments in scientific research, patents and major products of about 3,000 companies from 50 countries covering the five continents: Asia, Europe, America, Africa and the Oceania. The resource material and information are relevant and compulsory to practitioners and professionals in the fields of TCMM, medical biotechnology, biochemical industry and related medical instrumentation/equipment, as well as to organizational departments of the medicinal information management, intelligence, logistics and trade. The directory also opens up and serves as an important window through which biotech professionals master product information of their counterparts across the world. The directory will benefit professionals of medical heath, TCMM, biotechnology and related fields, as well as academics and students, executives of research, information media staffs and translators.

The Genetic Strand is the story of a writer's investigation, using DNA science, into the tale of his family's origins. National Book Award winner Edward Ball has turned his probing gaze on the microcosm of the human genome, and not just any human genome -- that of his slave-holding ancestors. What is the legacy of such a family history, and can DNA say something about it? In 2000, after a decade in New York City, Ball bought a house in Charleston, South Carolina, home to his father's family for generations, and furnished it with heirloom pieces from his relatives. In one old desk he was startled to discover a secret drawer, sealed perhaps since the Civil War, in which someone had hidden a trove of family hair, with each lock of hair labeled and dated. The strange find propelled him to investigate: what might DNA science reveal about the people -- Ball's family members, long dead -- to whom the hair had belonged? Did the hair come from white relatives, as family tradition insisted? How can genetic tests explain personal identity? Part crime-scene investigation, part genealogical romp, The Genetic Strand is a personal odyssey into DNA and family history. The story takes the reader into forensics labs where technicians screen remains, using genetics breakthroughs like DNA fingerprinting, and into rooms where fathers nervously await paternity test results. It also summons the writer¹s entertaining and idiosyncratic family, such as Ball¹s antebellum predecessor, Aunt Betsy, who published nutty books on good Southern society; Kate Fuller, the enigmatic ancestor who may have introduced African genes into the Ball family pool; and the author¹s first cousin Catherine, very much alive, who donates a cheek swab from a mouth more attuned to sweet iced tea than DNA sampling. Writing gracefully but pacing his story like an old-fashioned whodunit, Edward Ball tracks genes shared across generations, adding suspense and personal meaning to what the scientists and Nobel laureates tell us. A beguiling DNA tale, The Genetic Strand reaches toward a new form of writing the genetic memoir.