The Human Genome Project

Marshall, Elizabeth L. The Human Genome Project: Cracking The Code Within Us.

New York, New York: Franklin Watts, 1996. 1-128.

Elizabeth L. Marshall was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She grew up in areas of southern California, and in parts of New York City. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, and is currently married and has two daughters. She attended and graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in English. She then graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a Master of Fine Arts degree in fictional writing. She has worked form several scientific journals and magazines and is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. She has also written several well known books including Conquering Infertility: Medical Challenges and Moral Dilemmas, and High-Tech Harvest.

I chose this book because it seemed like an interesting topic, and because I thought it might help me understand more things about DNA. Someone else who read it said that it had a lot to do with the things we covered in class too so I figured it would be as good a choice as any.

This book is about the amazing task of mapping and showing all the sequences of the thousands and thousands of genes in the human body. The book is split up into nine chapters each of which covers a different aspect of this incredible project. The book tells all about almost every aspect of the project. It tells all about the project and what the point is, what has been accomplished so far, and when they expect it to be finished. According to the introduction the project is actually expected to be finished sometime this year.

The first chapter starts off with the basic structure of DNA and describes how the base pairing of each nucleotide creates each amino acid, which when all put together create a strand of DNA. It also gives an idea of who is working on the project. She lists several major cities where the project is being worked on and then goes on to explain how between all these different teams, who are all working on some different aspect of the project, there are also anywhere from 200 to 400 other smaller teams all around the country working on it. The next chapter is about chromosome 18, and how a slight mistake in it can cause things like mental retardation and deafness, and what they are trying to do to help stop or fix chromosome 18 deletion syndrome.