The Society of Genes

Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Prologue Chapter 1. Evolving Cancer in Eight Easy Steps A Disease of the Genome Cancer's Wish List One Renegade Genome Speaking of Genes One Step Forward, One Step Back Chapter 2. How Your Enemies Define You The Society of Genes How Bacteria Hold a Grudge A Random Mug-Shot Generator What Would Darwin Do? Double Agents and Baby Giraffes Lamarck's Milk Chapter 3. What's the Point of Having Sex? The Advantages of Sex: Beyond the Obvious Sex Is Egalitarian Big Stakes, Big Cheating This Is Not about You The Genomic Battle of the Sexes Chapter 4. The Clinton Paradox In and Out of Africa Evolution You Can Taste and See The Lucky Gene Africa's Genomic Cornucopia In Spite of Our Genes Chapter 5. Promiscuous Genes in a Complex Society Peas, Brother Guilt by Association The Rotting Ship of Theseus Promiscuous Teams in Bacteria The Perfect Drug Chapter 6. The Chuman Show Genomes in Flux The Key That Jams the Lock A Touching Family Reunion Better Than Sex Make Love, Not War Chapter 7. It's in the Way That You Use It Speak Up Big Brain Theory Genetic Turn-Ons Master Regulators and Hopeful Monsters Chapter 8. Theft, Imitation, and the Roots of Innovation An Eye from an Eye All in the Family The Society's Lego Set The Export/Import Business Chapter 9. A Secret Life in the Shadows The Birth of a Kingdom If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them Long Live the Prokaryotes Chapter 10. Life's Unwinnable War against Freeloaders The Bottom Line The Spandrels of San Marco Life's Oldest Enemy Biology for Beginners Epilogue Further Reading Acknowledgments Index

Martin Lercher lehrt und forscht als Professor für Bioinformatik an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Bevor er sich an der Universität von Bath und dem europäischen Molekularbiologie-Forschungszentrum Heidelberg der Genomforschung zuwandte, promovierte er in Cambridge in theoretischer Physik. Lercher erhielt für seine Forschungsarbeit renommierte Stipendien der Britischen Royal Society und der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft. Itai Yanai ist am Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Professor für Biologie und leitet das dortige Genome Center. Vorher forschte er in Harvard und am israelischen Weizmann Institute. Für seine Arbeiten wurde Yanai mit bedeutenden Preisen, unter anderem vom Europäischen Forschungsrat und von der European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), ausgezeichnet.

Yanai and Lercher invite the reader to step back and observe how genes assemble together to make a global genetic system, or genome... [It] largely succeeds in translating the findings of an esoteric science into something that is easily understood... The Society of Genes represents a timely and welcome handbook for navigating this postgenomic era.
-- Joseph Swift Science
Using findings from the molecular revolution that only really got going in the 1980s, the authors build up a picture of networks of genes forming guilds in order to preserve their DNA dynasties... [This] lively text contain[s] a panorama of examples illustrating how genes do better by combining forces in networks.
-- Charalambos P. Kyriacou Times Higher Education
Yanai and Lercher use the idea of a society of genes as a vantage point from which to reintroduce the entire field of evolutionary genetics... Even experienced readers are likely to encounter perspectives that are unexpected enough to make the book worth their effort... Readers meeting biology for the first time will be well served by this richer, more nuanced, way of viewing genetics, while those with a deeper background will find plenty of interest, notably in the vivid clarity of the explanations.
-- Bob Holmes New Scientist
If you're looking for a 'what's hot in genetics in 2016,' this book wouldn't be a bad place to start. It covers a huge number of topics-from the basics of genetics to genome editing, antimicrobial resistance and the functions of junk DNA... We need books like this.
-- Simon Hazelwood-Smith BioNews
The writing is engaging and clear, providing ample introductory material to ensure that the interested lay reader will be swept along by both the science and the evolutionary story...For the general reader, Yanai and Lercher's discussions of cancer, immunology, sexual reproduction, and population genetics are well worth exploring.
-- Publishers Weekly
Written by two of the smartest young thinkers in their fields,