Biocode : The New Age of Genomics
ISBN: 9780191511561
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Science; Science: Biology/ Natural History;

Biologists Field and Davies provide an interesting, if somewhat superficial, overview of the relatively new field of genomics, a discipline that combines cell biology, molecular biology, classical genetics, and computational science. The authors describe the basic operation of DNA and explain how major advances in technology permit researchers to cheaply and quickly sequence the genomes of all organisms, changing much about our understanding of biology. These advances have led to new insights about the evolution of humans and have allowed quicker response to outbreaks of disease such as SARS; they have also raised some fascinating questions, such as how giant viruses known as Pandoraviruses evolved and how they function. Field and Davies discuss the implications for biodiversity studies that arise from widespread DNA sequencing-pointing out the alarming rate at which species are currently going extinct-and the potential for personalized medicine based on the genetic makeup of individuals. Most of this work is still speculative, however, and their scant explanations of the applied realities of this research go no further than the many other texts addressing the topic. Although there are some fascinating sections, they touch on too many topics for such a short book, and the writing is too uninspired to carry readers along. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Dawn Field is a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford eResearch Centre at the University of Oxford, and the Head of Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics Group, Biodiversity Programme, at the NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. She has collaborated on metagenomics studies of the 'L4 site' in the Western Channel Observatory, making it one of the best-characterized microbial communities in the world.Neil Davies lives on Moorea (sister island to Tahiti) in French Polynesia where he is the Executive Director of the University of California Berkeley's Gump South Pacific Research Station. He is the lead principal investigator of the Moorea Biocode Project, a $5m effort to sequence (DNA barcode) all non-microbial species on the island.Both are Research Associates of the Biodiversity Institute of Oxford where they are using their complementary experiences to cofound the international Genomic Observatories (GOs) Network. They have published more than 140 scientific articles (including in Science, Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, and PNAS) and have research interests in evolution, population genetics, genomics, metagenomics, DNA barcoding, bioinformatics, biodiversity, and datasharing. Both believe strongly in the power of concerted, international community-driven scientific actions. Field is the founder of the Genomic Standards Consortium, a growing nexus point for a wide range of international projects in this domain and both serve on its Board. Together they are working to help championthe emergence of 'biodiversity genomics' as a scientific field.

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