The Art of Genes: How Organisms Make Themselves

by Enrico Coen

Overview

Over the past twenty years there has been a revolution in biology--for the first time scientists have been able to unravel the details of how organisms make themselves. The mechanisms by which a fertilized egg develops into an adult can now be grasped in a way that was unimaginable a few decades ago. The Art of Genes is the first account of these exciting new findings, and of their broader significance in how we view ourselves.
Through a highly original synthesis of sciece and art, Enrico Coen vividly describes this revolution in our understanding of how plants and animals develop. Drawing on a wide range of material--from flowers growing petals instead of sex organs, and flies that develop an extra pair of wings, to works of art by Leonardo and Magritte--he explains in lively accessible prose the meaning of genes. Coen draws parallels between the way genes respond to the developing pattern of an organism and the way an artist responds to a painting being created on canvas, a memorable analogy that shows how the organism develops through an interactive dialogue in which there is no separation between plan and execution.
There have been many attempts to resolve the paradox of how organisms make themselves. Lucid, authoritative, and entertaining, The Art of Genes offers fresh and exciting insights into the nature of evolution, development, and human creativity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192862082
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/17/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	7.83(w) x 5.06(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

Enrico Coen is Professor in the Genetics Department at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.

Table of Contents

Painting a picture
Copying and creating
A question of interpretation
A case of mistaken identity
The internal world of colour
Evolution of locks and keys
The hidden skeleton
The expanding canvas
Refining a pattern
Creative reproduction
Scents and sensitivities
Responding to the environment
Elaborating on asymmetry
Beneath the surface
Themes and variations
Shifting forms
The story of colour
The art of Heath Robinson
Sources of quotations
Bibliography
Glossary
Figure acknowledgements
Index

Editorial Reviews

"It is arguable that the most important advance in biology in the past twenty years has been the revolution in our understanding of the mechanisms of development.... Developmental biology has been transformed from a field in which ingenious manipulative experiments generated speculations about unobservable underlying causes, such as gradients and prepatterns, to one in which we have a very detailed knowledge of what is actually going on at the molecular and cellular level. Enrico Coen has written a book that attempts, with considerable success, to convey the essence of this revolution to the lay reader. It will also be of great interest to those biologists...who have only a superficial knowledge of the subject."TREE

From the Publisher

Through a highly original synthesis of science and art, The Art of Genes describes a revolution in understandings of how plants and animals develop....[it] is for anyone curious about how and why plants, animals, and humans form, develop, and look the way that they/we do....It will appeal to any general reader with a curiosity about science, as it will students, teachers, and professional biologists.

Biology Digest