Storytelling through the looking glass of genetics The Stute – The Stute

As we look in the mirror and find our fathers eyes or our mothers nose, what similarities persist through generations, and how do the unique ways we animate identical traits tell our story? Carl Zimmer, science journalist in genetics and author of the 2018 non-fiction book She Has Her Mothers Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity, captures the mixture of deja vu and naturalistic wonder as the machine of heredity reminds us of its unyielding march throughout our day to day lives.

The exigence of the book reflects a semi-memoir in which She Has Her Mothers Laugh has its humble beginnings from family dysfunction and a mid-life crisis very approachable. Zimmer pulls from his own anxieties about his unknown family tree while sitting with a genetics counselor discussing health predispositions for his own children. Zimmer describes his murky background as his mothers genealogy was equated to an elaborate game of telephone and his fathers side was a dead end, showing the reader that the books genetic inquiry is a very intimate relationship researched and traced back to validate those also searching into their genetic identity. Almost like pulling on loose threads to reveal the patchwork of the gene narrative, Zimmer is our tour guide from the birth of genetics in the 1900s to the political and ethical quandaries that have gravitated toward the human genome as technology has become more advanced and robust.

Zimmer bows down to the gene, and because every chromosome borrows from the last, he does the same. Like any true science journalist, Zimmer doesnt shy away from posing the bioethical questions of the future implications of genetic engineering and technology, but he knows that the answers are weaved into the past. As the book follows the relevant threads of heredity, careful to equally recognize non-western and classical concepts of genealogy, Zimmer exemplifies alternate concepts of heredity from the Malaysian Island of Langkawi that recognizes familial ties if children consumed the same food in which kinship was established through shared substance. Conversely, the hierarchy of pedigrees emerged in French society by the 13th century, coined by noble lineage portraiture. The physical proponents of limited gene pools and royal in-breeding have resulted in physical deformities such as the Habsburg Jaw, marked by an elongated lower jaw, which is symbolic of a moment in history where genetics jeopardized lineage and the unknown medical repercussions would continue to haunt an empire.

Few non-fiction books are fast and immersive reads, but She Has Her Mothers Laugh reads like a fairy-tale story as Zimmer turns to colorful anecdotes, historical case studies, and even mythology to answer the looming gene question. Contextualizing the origin of heredity, Zimmer knows that his audience isnt interested in a genetics lesson on Mendelian inheritance and human genome sequencing.

Leaning on cultural and historical phenomena, we learn of kinship bonds, feudal inheritance, and the transfer of culture aided through genes from across, and sometimes in spite of, generations. At its heart, this seemingly dense read about a long-forgotten high school biology class becomes an empathetic study of the confusion and admiration towards our own genetic profile that reveals a way of life. As the information on genetics has amassed, understanding complex inheritance of rare diseases and CRISPR gene editing, Zimmer treats these scientific checkpoints as living and changing entities that have been morphed by social interest, medical breakthroughs, and prejudice.

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Storytelling through the looking glass of genetics The Stute - The Stute