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Tears of the Cheetah: And Other Tales from the Genetic Frontier, by Stephen J. O'Brien
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The history of life on Earth is dominated by extinction events so numerous that over 99.9% of the species ever to have existed are gone forever. If animals could talk, we would ask them to recall their own ancestries, in particular the secrets as to how they avoided almost inevitable annihilation in the face of daily assaults by predators, climactic cataclysms, deadly infections and innate diseases.
In Tears of the Cheetah, medical geneticist and conservationist Stephen J. O'Brien narrates fast-moving science adventure stories that explore the mysteries of survival among the earth's most endangered and beloved wildlife. Here we uncover the secret histories of exotic species such as Indonesian orangutans, humpback whales, and the imperiled cheetah-the world's fastest animal which nonetheless cannot escape its own genetic weaknesses.
Among these genetic detective stories we also discover how the Serengeti lions have lived with FIV (the feline version of HIV), where giant pandas really come from, how bold genetic action pulled the Florida panther from the edge of extinction, how the survivors of the medieval Black Death passed on a genetic gift to their descendents, and how mapping the genome of the domestic cat solved a murder case in Canada.
With each riveting account of animal resilience and adaptation, a remarkable parallel in human medicine is drawn, adding yet another rationale for species conservation-mining their genomes for cures to our own fatal diseases. Tears of the Cheetah offers a fascinating glimpse of the insight gained when geneticists venutre into the wild.
- Sales Rank: #1184945 in Books
- Published on: 2003-09-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.14" w x 6.38" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
From Publishers Weekly
The 14 firsthand evolutionary yarns collected here are the equivalent of genomic Aesop's fables. By turns passionate, understated, unexpectedly literate and historically astute, O'Brien, head of the National Institutes of Health's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, is a breath of fresh air: he's written a genetics book that neither probes the ambiguous legacy of genetic engineering nor seeks to entice us with yet another last-word account of the race to map the human genome-and judiciously dispensing with jargon wherever possible, O'Brien's a smooth read as well. The author does not tell us the genetic fable of how the leopard got its spots, but he comes close. The title story recounts his research team's startling discovery of near-complete genetic uniformity among cheetahs, derived possibly from a brush with extinction that forced inbreeding. O'Brien enters a century-old debate on the taxonomy of the endangered panda, whether it belongs to the bear or the raccoon family: a little molecular-genetic detective work revealed it to be either, depending on the species (there is actually more than one). He reads and learns from the genetic histories of the humpback whale and other exotic species. An underlying theme of the book is how these parables illuminate human medicine-how, for example, insights into cat immunodeficiency could lead to a cure for AIDS; another could be said to be self-congratulation for his articles in Nature, his textbook citations and press clippings. But this is only a minor irritation. O'Brien is an explorer of the first order, intrepid and curious. His accomplishments, including this modest book, are considerable.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From The New England Journal of Medicine
For a molecular biologist, Stephen O'Brien has led an adventuresome life. Tears of the Cheetah recounts how the pursuit of molecular biology in his laboratory led to some of his far-flung pursuits. He collected sperm from wild East African cheetahs on the Serengeti Plain; placated a Dutch princess who thought he was shooting Tanzanian lions with bullets, rather than with anesthetizing darts; chased humpback whales in a Zodiac rubber raft; cuddled a baby giant panda in a thick Chinese bamboo forest; confronted a crown prosecutor during a Prince Edward Island murder trial in reference to the identification of a cat by DNA from a hair; and tracked orangutans in Borneo to perform skin biopsies. O'Brien is chief of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute. His book tells how the institute is applying molecular biology to the problems of endangered species. A recurrent theme is how a population bottleneck, reducing a population to a small number, can lead to a reduction in genetic variation as the surviving population increases. The resulting reductions in sperm count and testosterone levels and increases in infant mortality and birth defects imperil the survival of the population, as in the examples of East African cheetahs, African and Asiatic lions, and the Florida panther. Other examples of how techniques from the discipline of molecular genetics have helped ameliorate the problems of endangered species include working out how to tell when a species is genuinely an endangered species and therefore entitled to protection; detecting the DNA of whales of endangered species (not to be hunted) in "fish" from Japanese and Korean fish markets, thus proving illegal whaling; and deciding whether giant pandas are bears or raccoons (they are bears, and their reduced population size is due to reduced habitat, not inbreeding). O'Brien also illuminates how and when AIDS jumped from monkeys to people, underscoring the fact that the consumption of "bushmeat" from illegally slaughtered monkeys is a deadly, but ignored, practice that threatens us all. The language is clear, though an occasional surfeit of detail may become a little tedious. Most physicians have sufficient knowledge of DNA terminology to follow the molecular story, and if the reader is not on intimate terms with RFLPs, SNPs, microsatellites, and mitochondrial chromosomes, the gist of the book is still evident, and it will broaden the reader's horizons considerably. F. Clarke Fraser, M.D., Ph.D.
Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
From Booklist
Presenting his lab's genetic work on endangered species, O'Brien delves into considerable but not overwhelming technical detail. In part because he's a skillful narrator, relating how his expertise was sought to solve mysteries about the lion, the panda, and the humpback whale, O'Brien's exploration of the genetic landscape of a particular species is marvelously revelatory of its history. O'Brien and his colleagues at the National Cancer Institute are able to see near-extinction events of the past in various segments of DNA that have descended to the present: the cheetah, for example, came close to dying out 12,000 years ago. A species' episodes of disease and inbreeding are recorded in the genes O'Brien discusses, information crucial to preservation efforts--even if, as the author relates of his work on the Florida panther, there is resistance to accepting the information within the conservation community. Molecular biology can be difficult to absorb, but not when a clear expositor such as O'Brien has such good stories to tell. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I recommend this book
By Amazon Customer
It is quite interesting and not only does it educate, but also explains O'Brien's expiriences in his investigations.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Considering the subject matter, it was an easy read
By T. Stallings
I've learned so much from Tears of the Cheetah. While the subject is rather deep; (scientific), it was well written and easy to read.
Dr. O'Brian was able to blend history, science and personal experience into a well-written book.
-TJ
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Storytelling that imparts the awe of science
By J. S. Breunig
I am a biology graduate student and was thrilled to get back to reading science for a general audience when I got this book. The book delivered great stories of how our understanding of biology (mainly genetics and evolution) has grown by real leaps and bounds lately.
Each chapter is a different scientific adventure of the O'Brien lab; the book reads very much like an Odyssey. Sometimes the chapters are closely related (his work on the titular cheetahs clearly helped when he studied lions) and other times only the thinnest of threads brings (the amazingly well-written chapter on HIV seemed a bit out of context). This makes for a great style, as the stories are brief and get right to the interesting meat of the material. If you know academics, everything usually gets stretched out longer and the whole kitchen sink is discussed, but this chapter format avoids those typical traps.
These chapters are not just the science but also the social aspects of conducting science. There's the drama of personality clashes on international collaboration, the sweaty, dangerous work in the Everglades, South America and Africa, and the tragedy mixed with hope in the stories on HIV research. A textbook this is not, it moves and each story is just that: a story, not a summary.
Know nothing about biology? Yes, you can still read this book. While O'Brien does tend to assume some facts are common knowledge, he puts things in context so that you can at least get an idea. At times you can hear O'Brien's editor requesting explanations and these are sprinkled in often enough to get by. These sections are infrequent and short, so even if you just skip them you'll still get an appreciation for how cool the science is. As a biology grad student, I would rate the most technical language as easily understood by a someone with a few biology college courses under their belt, but even a high school understanding should make the majority of the details accessible.
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