The ADRB2 gene is related to the control of bronchodilation and bronchoconstriction.
Specifically, this includes a change from adenosine (A) to guanine (G) at position 46 on the ADRB2 gene. Asthma is related to as many as fifteen different genes, many on chromosome five. A brief history of the study of asthma is used as the case study.
The concepts of pleiotropy and genetic pluralism are introduced. The search for the chromosomal source of this and other related diseases is discussed through the work of Nancy Wexler, someone who may have inherited the gene but who turns to scientific work to study it in others. Huntington's chorea is used to discuss the use of a particular sequence on Chromosome Four to cause traumatic health consequences. This chapter discusses the interplay between early geneticists, including Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin, Hermann Joseph Muller and Francis Crick. He also points out that until the 19th Century, most scholars believed that there were 24 sets of genes, not 23 as known today. He compares the human genome to chimpanzees, and ancestral primates. Ridley discusses the history of human kind as a genetically distinct species. Ridley discusses the history of the gene briefly, including our " last universal common ancestor". The very broad topic "Life" is also the topic of the chapter. The first chapter begins with a quote from Alexander Pope on the cycle of life. Ridley was inspired to adopt this model by Primo Levi's book The Periodic Table. Since one (unnumbered) chapter is required to discuss the sex chromosomes, the final chapter is number 22. The book devotes one chapter to each pair of human chromosomes. He studied zoology, gaining his DPhil in 1983.
The book's author, Matt Ridley, is a British journalist and businessman, known for writing on science, the environment, and economics. The London Review of Books however found the book "at once instructive and infuriating", as "his right-wing politics lead him to slant the implications of the research. The book was welcomed by critics in journals such as Nature and newspapers including The New York Times. The chapters are numbered for the pairs of human chromosomes, one pair being the X and Y sex chromosomes, so the numbering goes up to 22 with Chapter X and Y couched between Chapters 7 and 8. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters is a 1999 popular science book by the science writer Matt Ridley, published by Fourth Estate.
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