Rating: Excellent Reviewed by: Eric Jones It’s become rather fashionable in literature today for authors to put a new spin on the link between science and religion. As both philosophies continue to collide, spin, and evolve into one another readers have been treated to books like Genome Scientist Francis Collins’ “Language of God”, which presents religion from a scientific point of view, along with rebuttals like Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”, but nobody makes an argument quite like Ahamed V.P. Kutty. In his similar exploration of these worlds, Kutty presents evidence in the face of a religious question often overlooked among Christians, Muslims, and Jewish practitioners. The question is simple: If incest is a sin, and Adam and Eve were the first humans created by God to conceive and populate the earth, then wouldn’t their offspring be forced to mate with one another in order to achieve such ends? In essence, has God, or the creators of the Bible and Qur’an, created a situation where humanity must sin to survive? The answer, as always, is not as simple as the question. As the title might have given away, this is a book of scientific research which takes the writings of biblical scripture into account in order to achieve an answer. As such, it assumes that the reader is also religious. But not blindly so, as an overwhelming amount of scientists are turning to religion to solve the questions that they themselves cannot, it is no small readership that Kutty addresses. And his writing is cleverly detailed from both points of view so that ministers of faith will find it just as interesting as those of science. Answering the proposed thesis leads the reader on a journey through many questions that befuddle even the most devout religious followers. Where is the biblical Garden of Eden? How does religion account for the theory of evolution? Who are the real Adam and Eve? Is the Bible meant to be taken literally, or as hyperbole? Walking a middle path between the radical views of both science and religion is bound to offend fringe readers, but I think the majority of us tend to hold a similar middle ground. And for us, Kutty lays an overwhelming amount of evidence at our feet, which take all widely accepted viewpoints regarding the nature of evolution, the Garden of Eden, and the many different versions of Adam and Eve, into account. Often Kutty excludes the verbalized opinion that is so prominent in the works of his contemporaries, allowing the reader to connect the dots for themselves having looked over each textual exhibit. This layout is also helpful for quick reading, reference, and maintaining interest of laymen, like me, since all of these points are categorically organized and labeled. Each chapter begins with a clearly stated paragraph that elaborates on its title, and is often followed by the listing of evidence which lead the reader to the drawn conclusion. What Kutty is able to do, using this method, is clearly present his case without reducing anything to simple conjecture. Although this method does have a few minor holes since using evidence connecting so many different sources is sometimes thin. For instance, the use of a theory in general relativity to explain how angels of heaven might be able to travel through wormholes to get between Heaven and Earth is, according to Kutty himself, “not readily acceptable but feasible”. In other words, there is only so much that science can explain. However, the research regarding DNA histories which trace ancestry back to an original Adam and Eve, (though admittedly not the Bible’s Adam and Eve) is extremely positive. These many cases often provide a jumping point for those who wish to examine the issues more closely through the inclusion, at the end of each chapter, of a detailed bibliography. “Adam’s Gene and the Mitochondrial Eve” is brilliant. It constructs a dazzling house of carefully implemente

Addressing the intense debate in science and religion in light of evolutionary population genetics, Andrew Ter Ern Loke argues that the theory of evolution as understood by mainstream scientists is compatible with Scripture. Loke asserts that resolving this area of perceived conflict would greatly benefit both scientific and religious communities, and contribute to the spiritual quest of humankind. Whilst affirming that the Bible should be interpreted according to proper hermeneutical principles such as considering the literary genre, literary context, meaning of words, grammatical relationship, and the background and concerns of the ancient authors, this book also assesses the scientific data according to proper mainstream scientific methodology. Having accomplished these tasks, it proposes a model which argues that all humans today have Adam as common ancestor even though this ancestor is not our sole ancestor.

Situated at the intersection of natural science and philosophy, Our Genes explores historical practices, investigates current trends, and imagines future work in genetic research to answer persistent, political questions about human diversity. Readers are guided through fascinating thought experiments, complex measures and metrics, fundamental evolutionary patterns, and in-depth treatment of exciting case studies. The work culminates in a philosophical rationale, based on scientific evidence, for a moderate position about the explanatory power of genes that is often left unarticulated. Simply put, human evolutionary genomics - our genes - can tell us much about who we are as individuals and as collectives. However, while they convey scientific certainty in the popular imagination, genes cannot answer some of our most important questions. Alternating between an up-close and a zoomed-out focus on genes and genomes, individuals and collectives, species and populations, Our Genes argues that the answers we seek point to rich, necessary work ahead.

Glenn Morton used to be a young-earth creationist, but the facts changed his views. In this his second book, Morton shows that mainstream science does not contradict a literal reading of the inerrant word of God. The author provides proof that God created Adam and Eve about 5.5 million years B. C. (Please note that, for formatting purposes, there is an intentionally blank page between pages 5 and 6 of the main text.)

This book provides the first modern and truly comprehensive coverage of the biochemistry, genetics, and pathology of mitochondria in different organisms. It particularly focuses on the recent advances in our understanding of basic mitochondrial research to the consequences of dysfunction at the molecular level. (Cover)

This book will help readers navigate the complexity of mitochondrial disorders, by addressing the role of mitochondrial dysfunction and the complex pathophysiological mechanisms associated with a growing number of illnesses, not only of neurological interest. Further, it provides updated concepts on genotype-phenotype correlations, clinical syndromes, diagnostic algorithms and therapies. Written by the world’s foremost mitochondrial researchers, the book comprehensively presents the state-of-the-art in mitochondrial medicine, making it of interest to a wide variety of specialists, including neurologists, geneticists, internists and biologists.

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA. The discovery was a profound, Nobel Prize-winning moment in the history of genetics, but it did not decipher the messages on the twisted, ladderlike strands within our cells. No one knew what the human genome sequence actually was. No one had cracked the code of life. Now, at the beginning of a new millennium, that code has been cracked. Kevin Davies, founding editor of the leading journal in the field, Nature Genetics, has relentlessly followed the story as it unfolded, week by week, for ten years. Here for the first time, in rich human, scientific, and financial detail, is the dramatic story of one of the greatest scientific feats ever accomplished: the mapping of the human genome. In 1990, the U.S. government approved a 15-year, $3 billion plan to launch the Human Genome Project, whose goal was to sequence the 3 billion letters of human DNA. At the helm of the project was James Watson, who resigned after only a couple of years, following a feud with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Bernadine Healy over gene patenting. His successor was the brilliant young medical geneticist Francis Collins, who had made his name discovering the gene for cystic fibrosis. As Davies reports, Collins is a devout Christian who has traveled to Africa to work in a missionary hospital. He believes the human genome sequence is "the language of God." Just as Collins became project director, J. Craig Venter, a maverick DNA sequencer and Vietnam veteran, was leaving the NIH to start his own private research institute. Venter had developed a simple "shotgun" strategy for sequencing DNA, and his fame skyrocketed when his new institute proved his sequencing system worked by becoming the first to sequence the entire genome of a microorganism. Only 3 percent of the human genome had been sequenced by early 1998, the public project's halfway point. That same year, Venter was approached by PE Corporation to launch a private human genome project. He stunned the world when he announced the formation of a new company to sequence the human genome in a mere three years for $300 million. A war of words broke out between public and private researchers. Undeterred, Venter built Celera Genomics with the motto "Speed matters. Discovery can't wait." and an $80 million supercomputer. While the insults intensified, Celera's stock price soared, tumbled, and soared again. Negotiations for cooperation between the public and private institutes began, only to fall apart in acrimony. Then in the spring of 2000 President Clinton stepped in, telling his science adviser to restart negotiations. History was about to be made. Davies captures the drama of this momentous achievement, drawing on his own genetics expertise and interviews with key scientists including Venter and Collins, as well as Eric Lander, an MIT computer wizard who refers to the public genome project as "the forces of good"; Kari Stefánsson, the genetics entrepreneur who is remaking Iceland's economy; and John Sulston, chief of the UK genome project, who led the charge against gene patenting. Davies has visited geneticists around the world to illustrate a vast international enterprise working on the frontier of human knowledge. Cracking the Genome is the definitive account of how the code that holds the answers to the origin of life, the evolution of humanity, and the future of medicine was broken.

The present book gives an overview on the similarities and differences of the various translation systems. Moreover, it highlights the mechanisms and control of translation in mitochondria and other organelles such as chloroplasts, plastids and apicoplasts in different organisms. Lastly, it offers an outlook on future developments and applications that might be made possible by a better understanding of translation in mitochondria and other organelles.

Mitochondria in plants, as in other eukaryotes, play an essential role in the cell as the major producers of ATP via oxidative phosphorylation. However, mitochondria also play crucial roles in many other aspects of plant development and performance, and possess an array of unique properties which allow them to interact with the specialized features of plant cell metabolism. The two main themes running through the book are the interconnection between gene regulation and protein function, and the integration of mitochondria with other components of plant cells. The book begins with an overview of the dynamics of mitochondrial structure, morphology and inheritance. It then discusses the biogenesis of mitochondria, the regulation of gene expression, the mitochondrial genome and its interaction with the nucleus, and the targeting of proteins to the organelle. This is followed by a discussion of the contributions that mutations, involving mitochondrial proteins, have made to our understanding of the way the organelle interacts with the rest of the plant cell, and the new field of proteomics and the discovery of new functions. Also covered are the pathways of electron transport, with special attention to the non-phosphorylating bypasses, metabolite transport, and specialized mitochondrial metabolism. In the end, the impact of oxidative stress on mitochondria and the defense mechanisms, that are employed to allow survival, are discussed. This book is for the use of advanced undergraduates, graduates, postgraduates, and beginning researchers in the areas of molecular and cellular biology, integrative biology, biochemistry, bioenergetics, proteomics and plant and agricultural sciences.

Humans possess the most expressive faces in the animal kingdom. Adam Wilkins presents evidence ranging from the fossil record to recent findings of genetics, molecular biology, and developmental biology to reconstruct the fascinating story of how the human face evolved. Beginning with the first vertebrate faces half a billion years ago and continuing to dramatic changes among our recent human ancestors, Making Faces illuminates how the unusual characteristics of the human face came about—both the physical shape of facial features and the critical role facial expression plays in human society. Offering more than an account of morphological changes over time and space, which rely on findings from paleontology and anthropology, Wilkins also draws on comparative studies of living nonhuman species. He examines the genetic foundations of the remarkable diversity in human faces, and also shows how the evolution of the face was intimately connected to the evolution of the brain. Brain structures capable of recognizing different individuals as well as “reading” and reacting to their facial expressions led to complex social exchanges. Furthermore, the neural and muscular mechanisms that created facial expressions also allowed the development of speech, which is unique to humans. In demonstrating how the physical evolution of the human face has been inextricably intertwined with our species’ growing social complexity, Wilkins argues that it was both the product and enabler of human sociality.