The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee Page 0,260

Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011).

At Harvard, a soft-spoken biochemist: Itay Budin and Jack W. Szostak, “Expanding roles for diverse physical phenomena during the origin of life,” Annual Review of Biophysics 39 (2010): 245–63; and Alonso Ricardo and Jack W. Szostak, “Origin of life on Earth,” Scientific American 301, no. 3 (2009): 54–61.

followed the work of Stanley Miller: The original experiments were performed by Miller in conjunction with Harold Urey at the University of Chicago; John Sutherland, in Manchester, also performed key experiments.

Subsequent variations of the Miller experiment: Ricardo and Szostak, “Origin of life on Earth,” 54–61.

Szostak has demonstrated that such micelles: Jack W. Szostak, David P. Bartel, and P. Luigi Luisi, “Synthesizing life,” Nature 409, no. 6818 (2001): 387–90. Also see Martin M. Hanczyc, Shelly M. Fujikawa, and Jack W. Szostak, “Experimental models of primitive cellular compartments: Encapsulation, growth, and division,” Science 302, no. 5645 (2003): 618–22.

“It is relatively easy to see how”: Ricardo and Szostak, “Origin of life on Earth,” 54–61.

PART SIX: POST-GENOME

Those who promise us paradise on earth: Elias G. Carayannis and Ali Pirzadeh, The Knowledge of Culture and the Culture of Knowledge: Implications for Theory, Policy and Practice (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 90.

It’s only we humans: Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia (New York: Grove Press, 2007), “Act Two, August 1852.”

The Future of the Future

Probably no DNA science is at once: Gina Smith, The Genomics Age: How DNA Technology Is Transforming the Way We Live and Who We Are (New York: AMACOM, 2004).

Clear the air!: Thomas Stearns Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

In 1974, barely three years after: Rudolf Jaenisch and Beatrice Mintz, “Simian virus 40 DNA sequences in DNA of healthy adult mice derived from preimplantation blastocysts injected with viral DNA,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 71, no. 4 (1974): 1250–54.

biologists stumbled on a critical discovery: M. J. Evans and M. H. Kaufman, “Establishment in culture of pluripotential cells from mouse embryos,” Nature 292 (1981): 154–56.

“Nobody seems to be interested in my cells”: M. Capecchi, “The first transgenic mice: An interview with Mario Capecchi. Interview by Kristin Kain,” Disease Models & Mechanisms 1, no. 4–5 (2008): 197.

With ES cells, however, scientists: See for instance M. R. Capecchi, “High efficiency transformation by direct microinjection of DNA into cultured mammalian cells,” Cell 22 (1980): 479–88; and K. R. Thomas and M. R. Capecchi, “Site-directed mutagenesis by gene targeting in mouse embryo–derived stem cells,” Cell 51 (1987): 503–12.

You could choose to change the insulin gene: O. Smithies et al., “Insertion of DNA sequences into the human chromosomal-globin locus by homologous re-combination,” Nature 317 (1985): 230–34.

The “watchmaker” of evolution, as Richard Dawkins: Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (W. W. Norton, 1986).

They are the savants of the rodent world: Kiyohito Murai et al., “Nuclear receptor TLX stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis and enhances learning and memory in a transgenic mouse model,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 25 (2014): 9115–20.

“It may be the field’s dirty little secret”: Karen Hopkin, “Ready, reset, go,” The Scientist, March 11, 2011, the-scientist/?articles.view/articleNo/30726/title/Ready--Reset--Go/.

In 1988, a two-year-old girl: Details of the story of Ashanti DeSilva are from W. French Anderson, “The best of times, the worst of times,” Science 288, no. 5466 (2000): 627; Lyon and Gorner, Altered Fates; and Nelson A. Wivel and W. French Anderson, “24: Human gene therapy: Public policy and regulatory issues,” Cold Spring Harbor Monograph Archive 36 (1999): 671–89.

“Mommy, you shouldn’t have had”: Lyon and Gorner, Altered Fates, 107.

The Bubble Boy, as David was called: “David Phillip Vetter (1971–1984),” American Experience, PBS, pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bubble/peopleevents/p_vetter.html.

Richard Mulligan, a virologist and geneticist: Luigi Naldini et al., “In vivo gene delivery and stable transduction of nondividing cells by a lentiviral vector,” Science 272, no. 5259 (1996): 263–67.

led by William French Anderson and Michael Blaese: “Hope for gene therapy,” Scientific American Frontiers, PBS, pbs.org/saf/1202/features/genetherapy.htm.

In the early 1980s, Anderson and Blaese: W. French Anderson et al., “Gene transfer and expression in nonhuman primates using retroviral vectors,” Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 51 (1986): 1073–81.

“Nobody knows what may happen”: Lyon and Gorner, Altered Fates, 124.

Perhaps predictably, the RAC rejected the protocol outright: Lisa Yount, Modern Genetics: Engineering Life (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006), 70.

“A cosmic moment has come and gone”: Lyon and Gorner, Altered Fates, 239.

“Jesus Christ himself could walk by”: Ibid., 240.

“It’s not a big improvement”: Ibid., 268.

At four, he had joyfully eaten: Barbara Sibbald, “Death but one unintended consequence of gene-therapy trial,”