Product Description

'Coen's book is spiced with historic quotations and examples of plants' and animals' intriguing behaviour contains a wealth of interesting material Coen communicates his immense learning with a hundred appealing tales' Max Perutz How is a tiny fertilised egg able to turn itself into a human being? How can an acorn transform itself into an oak tree? Over the past twenty years there has been a revolution in biology. For the first time we have begun to understand how organisms make themselves. The Art of Genes gives an account of these new and exciting findings, and of their broader significance for how we view ourselves. Through a highly original synthesis of science and art, Enrico Coen vividly describes this revolution in our understanding of how plants and animals develop. Drawing on a wide range of examplesDSfrom flowers growing petals instead of sex organs, and flies that develop an extra pair of wings, to works of art by Leonardo and MagritteDShe explains in lively, accessible prose the language and meaning of genes. 'I would have loved this book at 16, and so should anyoneDSaged 16 to 60DSwho really wants to understand development.' John Maynard Smith, Nature

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44612 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Genetics is a complex subject and many of the metaphors writers use to explain it-- in particular those which draw facile comparisons between genetics and computing--are seriously misleading.

Enrico Coen's erudite code-to-carcass account of plant and animal development is set to change all that. Besotted with the way genes recreate forms over and over with unerring accuracy, we tend, Coen argues, to assume that the "blueprints" for these "copies" are entirely contained within the genes. Instead, Coen would have us imagine an organism's genetic code as the record of an artist's mood, immediately prior to starting a painting. Each organism, Coen argues, is like a painting--the unique product of creative genes, reacting constructively to the appearance of the "canvas" as it develops. What maintains fidelity from generation to generation is not the ability of genes to "copy" whole bodies, but their faithful recapitulation of artistic moods. Imagine Leonardo, gripped with recurrent amnesia, painting the Mona Lisa, over and over and over again. No painting that results is really a "copy" and neither is any organism.

At first glance, these artistic analogies appear dangerously anthropomorphic; so Coen has taken extreme care to define his terms and say what each analogy is meant to achieve. The result is not the easiest book--but who cares about that? Genetics is not the easiest subject and only Coen, to date, has captured its extraordinary beauty and complexity in terms the general reader can enjoy and--more important--trust. --Simon Ings

Review
"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
Information about this book
The Art of Genes How Organisms Make Themselves

Enrico Coen, John Innes Centre, Norwich

A groundbreaking new way of looking at one of the last great mysteries of biology…

How exactly is a fertilised egg able to turn itself into an adult human being? Through a highly original synthesis of science and art, Enrico Coen vividly describes the recent revolution in our understanding of how plants and animals develop, giving fresh insights into the nature of evolution and human creativity.

*Written by an author at the cutting edge of current research *An overview of modern ideas in development *A fundamentally new approach to looking at development and its relation to evolution and human creativity *A fresh synthesis of key ideas in science, art and philosophy

Customer Reviews

A skillful and entertaining story of development
I was very happy to stumble upon this book on the development of organisms. In this popularization of the science of development Enrico Coen proves himself equal to the best science popularizers. I was delighted to find a book which empashizes that genes are not the only source of biological information which are responsible for development. As a physicist, and computer scientist it has always been clear to me that genes cannot explain organisms by themselves. In addition to the protein recipie book that is DNA there must be a mechanism for use the ingredients. It is not just the ingredients but the amounts, their use or omission, the geometry of the cellular growth, mixture or separation, dominance, timing and irreversibility...all of the familiar features of complex systems, and indeed the entire history of the evolution which is summarized in the structure and composition of the cells and their protein consituents.

Coens book is successful in weaving the artistic analogy into a truthfully coherent and entertaining description of what is known about development. Initially I was worried by the title of the book, that the analogy would go too far, but I believe that the discerning reader will find the analogy only entertaining and sometimes helpful in providing a pedagogical reference frame.

The author is to be congratulated on producing a timely and beautiful book on a conceptually difficult topic.

Mark Burgess Associate professor, Oslo University College

Exceptional read
I have a bad habit of starting popular science books and not getting through to the last page. I had no problem with this book - it makes a complex topic highly accessible. I'm looking forward to reading more books on Bio development.

Highly recommended.

Stunningly good
This book is quite simply the best I have ever seen in its field. First, it is amazingly comprehensibly written, using straightforward metaphors to help the reader follow the course of the argument. Second, the argument itself is well laid out so that everyone from the beginner to the expert is clear exactly what is being demonstrated at any one point. Third, all unnecessary jargon has been abandoned, _without_ sacrificing any sophistication. Fourth, there seem to be so few authors who are willing to accept that genetic _and_ environmental factors play an equally powerful role in the delicate co-evolutionary interplay which is the story of the development of an organism. Enrico Coen is one of these few - thank you _very_ much, Mr. Coen!