Junk DNA

A Journey Through the Dark Matter of the Genome

No cover

Nessa Carey: Junk DNA (2015, Icon Books, Limited)

English language

Published Feb. 28, 2015 by Icon Books, Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-84831-915-8
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

3 stars (2 reviews)

6 editions

Review of 'Junk DNA' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Carey follows up her book on epigenetics (essentially the effects of parts of DNA that aren't the base-pairs that make up genes) with another that looks at the 98% of your DNA that doesn't code for proteins, generally referred to as "junk" because it was believed it had no biological function.

This model, that all you need to understand cellular life is a list of the protein-coding segments of DNA, has completely colapsed. Numerous DNA sequences that have nothing directly to do with protein manufacture have been found to be essential to the proper functioning of cells in complex life. You can learn about many of them here, in a very clear, fair and balanced way.

I have become interested in the actual chemistry of the various processes Carey describes in her first two books at the level of metaphor. I'm not sure where to find out about that, short …

avatar for pwaring

rated it

3 stars

Subjects

  • Genomics
  • Human gene mapping
  • Eukaryotic cells
  • Dna