Gleeson Library: Biotechnology: New Books: New Books (2024)

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a "compelling" (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn't become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book's author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm...Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is an "enthralling detective story" (Oprah Daily) that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.

Building Backwards to Biotech: The Power of Entrepreneurship to Drive Cutting-Edge Science to Market

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing

One of the world's leading experts on genetics unravels one of the most important breakthroughs in modern science and medicine. If our genes are, to a great extent, our destiny, then what would happen if mankind could engineer and alter the very essence of our DNA coding? Millions might be spared the devastating effects of hereditary disease or the challenges of disability, whether it was the pain of sickle-cell anemia to the ravages of Huntington's disease. But this power to "play God" also raises major ethical questions and poses threats for potential misuse. For decades, these questions have lived exclusively in the realm of science fiction, but as Kevin Davies powerfully reveals in his new book, this is all about to change. Engrossing and page-turning,Editing Humanitytakes readers inside the fascinating world of a new gene editing technology called CRISPR, a high-powered genetic toolkit that enables scientists to not only engineer but to edit the DNA of any organism down to the individual building blocks of the genetic code. Davies introduces readers to arguably the most profound scientific breakthrough of our time. He tracks the scientists on the front lines of its research to the patients whose powerful stories bring the narrative movingly to human scale. Though the birth of the "CRISPR babies" in China made international news, there is much more to the story of CRISPR than headlines seemingly ripped from science fiction. In Editing Humanity, Davies sheds light on the implications that this new technology can have on our everyday lives and in the lives of generations to come.

Breaking Through: My Life in Science

A powerful memoir from Katalin Karikó, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines "Katalin Karikó's story is an inspiration."--Bill Gates "Riveting . . . a true story of a brilliant biochemist who never gave up or gave in."--Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Katalin Karikó has had an unlikely journey. The daughter of a butcher in postwar communist Hungary, Karikó grew up in an adobe home that lacked running water, and her family grew their own vegetables. She saw the wonders of nature all around her and was determined to become a scientist. That determination eventually brought her to the United States, where she arrived as a postdoctoral fellow in 1985 with $1,200 sewn into her toddler's teddy bear and a dream to remake medicine. Karikó worked in obscurity, battled co*ckroaches in a windowless lab, and faced outright derision and even deportation threats from her bosses and colleagues. She balked as prestigious research institutions increasingly conflated science and money. Despite setbacks, she never wavered in her belief that an ephemeral and underappreciated molecule called messenger RNA could change the world. Karikó believed that someday mRNA would transform ordinary cells into tiny factories capable of producing their own medicines on demand. She sacrificed nearly everything for this dream, but the obstacles she faced only motivated her, and eventually she succeeded. Karikó's three-decade-long investigation into mRNA would lead to a staggering achievement: vaccines that protected millions of people from the most dire consequences of COVID-19. These vaccines are just the beginning of mRNA's potential. Today, the medical community eagerly awaits more mRNA vaccines--for the flu, HIV, and other emerging infectious diseases. Breaking Through isn't just the story of an extraordinary woman. It's an indictment of closed-minded thinking and a testament to one woman's commitment to laboring intensely in obscurity--knowing she might never be recognized in a culture that is driven by prestige, power, and privilege--because she believed her work would save lives.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Project Description: Theories are part and parcel of every human activity that involves knowing about the world and our place in it. In all areas of inquiry from the most commonplace to the most scholarly and esoteric, theorizing plays a fundamental role. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematicsfocuses on the ways that various STEM disciplines theorize about their subject matter. How is thinking about the subject organized? What methods are used in moving a novice in given field into the position of a competent student of that subject? Within the pages of this landmark work, readers will learn about the complex decisions that are made when framing a theory, what goes into constructing a powerful theory, why some theories change or fail, how STEM theories reflect socio-historical moments in time and how - at their best - they form the foundations for exploring and unlocking the mysteries of the world around us. Featuring more than 200 authoritative articles written by experts in their respective fields, the encyclopedia includes a Reader's Guide that organizes entries by broad themes; lists of Further Readings and cross-references that conclude each article;and a Resource Guide listing classic books in the field, leading journals, associations, and key websites.

Being Human in STEM: Partnering with Students to Shape Inclusive Practices and Communities

For all STEM faculty, chairs, administrators, and faculty developers who work to support students' learning and thriving in STEM - especially those students who have felt unwelcome and unsupported in their past STEM experiences - this book offers sustainable strategies that are now being widely adopted to create inclusive environments in undergraduate STEM classes and programs. Further, this book presents a framework for partnering with students to collaboratively envision how STEM can be a space that fosters a sense of belonging for, and promotes the success of, all individuals in STEM. This book presents the Being Human in STEM Initiative, or HSTEM, as a model for challenging the assumptions we make, and how we communicate to students, about who belongs and who can thrive in STEM. This work arose out of a time of conflict at Amherst College: A four-day sit-in, protesting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and bringing attention to related experiences of exclusion and marginalization that minoritized students experienced on campus. What emerged from that conflict has been transformative for the college, its students, and for its faculty and staff. In this book, the authors share how the HSTEM course came into being, offer a course overview, readings, and resources for developing an HSTEM course at your own institution, provide recommendations for evaluating the multi-level impact of inclusive change initiatives, and profile models of how the HSTEM course has been adapted at colleges and universities across the country. In addition to providing a road map for developing your own HSTEM course, the authors articulate ways that you can make any course or institutional structure more inclusive through active listening and validation, and through reflective practice and partnership, to progressively make incremental and sustainable changes in STEM education. Through listening and reflecting, the model facilitates uncovering the disconnects that can impede inclusivity in our classrooms and laboratories. While the authors offer a proven process and model for change, originally motivated by the urgent need to respond to students' demands, they recognize that larger institutional culture shifts require the identification and commitment to common values, a shared sense of purpose in the work of change, and the provision of agency and resources to individuals tasked with making change happen. How might we shift institutional STEM culture? The HSTEM model provides one solution: By reflecting on our own lived experiences and identities, engaging with the literature on the factors that enhance and limit full inclusion in STEM, and partnering with students to identify actionable ways to bring about sustainable change in our scientific communities, we can all work towards creating a more inclusive, and human, STEM ecosystem.Each chapter opens with a set of guiding reflective questions to help you connect these ideas, frameworks, and strategies to your own teaching and institutional context. While each chapter builds on the previous ideas and frameworks, the book can also be used as a resource to identify a just-in-time strategy to address particular questions you may have about making your teaching more inclusive. The appendices offer an array of Facilitator Guides, each of which outlines a student-endorsed exercise, based on the pedagogical literature, that can foster a sense of belonging and inclusion in your classrooms and laboratory spaces.