The Misunderstood Gene by Michel Morange, Harvard University Press,
$24.95, ISBN 0674003365
MICHEL MORANGE combines his professorship in biology with directing the
Centre for the Study of the History of Science in Paris. So he has an unusually
broad take on the current enthusiasm for identifying genes for
everything鈥攆rom specific diseases to vague behavioural tendencies.
The word 鈥済ene鈥� still means different things to evolutionary biologists and
to developmental biologists. For the former it is an abstract accounting unit,
while for the latter it is about the control of the programmed transcription and
translation which results in the synthesis of proteins.
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Morange attempts to define both the power and the limits of genes, with their
multiple effects and limited predictive power. His book makes a case for putting
the cell rather than the molecule at the centre of attention to account for the
complexity and hierarchical organisation of living systems.
The Misunderstood Gene is a richly documented volume, convincing by example
rather than assertion, and should be read by all who pump out press releases
that fill the newspapers with wildly oversold genetic claims. Perhaps for that
necessary function it assumes too much prior biochemical knowledge, but it
should still be on every biology student鈥檚 list of required reading.