مراجع وهوامش
The literature of genetics and molecular biology is gargantuan and out of
date. As it is published, each book, article or scientific paper requires updating
or revising, so fast is new knowledge being minted (the same applies to my book).
So
many scientists are now working in the field that it is almost impossible even for
many of them to keep up with each other’s work. When writing this book, I found that
frequent trips to the library and conversations with scientists were not enough. The
new way to keep abreast was to surf the Net.
The best repository of genetic knowledge is found at Victor McKusick’s
incomparable website known as OMIM, for Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man. Found
at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim/, it includes a separate essay
with sources on every human gene that has been mapped or sequenced, and it is
updated very regularly—an almost overwhelming task. The Weizmann Institute in Israel
has another excellent website with “gene-cards” summarising what is known about
eachgene and links to other relevant
websites: bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il/cards.
But these websites give only summaries of knowledge and they are not for
the faint-hearted: there is much jargon and assumed knowledge, which will defeat
many amateurs. They also concentrate on the relevance of each gene for inherited
disorders, thus compounding the problem that I have tried to combat in this book:
the impression that the main function of genes is to cause diseases.
I have relied heavily on textbooks, therefore, to supplement and explain
the latest knowledge. Some of the best are Tom Strachan and Andrew Read’s Human molecular genetics (Bios Scientific Publishers,
1996), Robert Weaver and Philip Hedrick’s Basic
genetics (William C. Brown, 1995), David Micklos and Greg Freyer’s
DNA science (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Press, 1990) and Benjamin Lewin’s Genes VI
(Oxford University Press, 1997).
As for more popular books about the genome in general, I recommend
Christopher Wills’s Exons, introns and talking
genes (Oxford University Press, 1991), Walter Bodmer and Robin
McKie’s The book of man (Little, Brown, 1994) and
Steve Jones’s The language of the genes (Harper
Collins, 1993). Also Tom Strachan’s The human
genome (Bios, 1992). All of these are inevitably showing their age,
though.
In each chapter of this book, I have usually relied on one or two main
sources, plus a variety of individual scientific papers. The notes that follow are
intended to direct the interested reader, who wishes to follow up the subjects, to
these sources.
