A SIMPLE REVIEW OF A COMPLEX BOOK

Linda and Florence at a Relay for Life

Do you know that there are about 100 billion nerve cells in the human brain, about equal to the number of stars estimated to exist in the Milky Way galaxy?  Well, now you do.  Furthermore, each nerve cells make a vast number of connections with other nerve cells – amounting to the order of 100 trillion little entanglements.  That’s a truly staggering number.  In fact, the only larger number that occurs to me offhand is the odds against my Kalamazoo relatives voting for Donald Trump in the next election.  I cite these facts mostly to introduce the chief unifying factor of the book I am about to “review”:  complexity.

The book is The Deeper Genome, John Parrington.  It was published by Oxford University Press; Parrington seems to be an Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacology at that venerable and justly praised institution.  Parrington’s book intends to make sense of the recently verified observation that the vast majority of DNA does not code for proteins, and that the differences in protein-coding sequences in humans and worms (not to mention chimps and mice) do not seem sufficient to account for our obvious dissimilarities.  These differences arise from business conducted by processes that go on in The Deeper Genome: regulatory business.  Regulatory processes are why you don't grow toenails in you eyeball.  They also account for the fact that a human gene, while very similar to the same gene in a worm, can do a hell of a lot more.  Let’s face is, this stuff is, well – PRETTY DAMNED COMPLICATED!  And so is this book.

Nessa Carey’s latest book covered much of this ground, only better.  I read all of this kind of material that I can find because I think it is of the greatest importance for molecular biology, and cancer research in particular. However, I don't inflict it all on you - you would Unfriend me on Facebook!  Besides, what else would I be doing?  I figure that Dr. Parrington spared me from many dozens of hours of daytime television.  I have entered it in my blog “The Cancer Researcher Wannabe’s Bookshelf”

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-cancer-researcher-wannabes-bookshelf.html

with a grade of B-