The 24th Annual Book Report Competition for secondary school students
Class: 6S
Student: Cheung Kin Wa
Title of the book: The Human Genome
Author: Jeremy Cherfas
Publisher: Joint Publishing
In ancient times, two questions puzzled the scientists for a long time. Why are offspring like their parents? How does one type of organism change into another? These two questions induced scientists to develop the ideas about inheritance and evolution. This book talks about the build up of these two ideas, including the famous ‘tall story’ of Lamarck, Darwin’s theory of evolution and the important discovery by Mendel. Finally, scientists studied the inheritance and evolution furthers more and at the molecular level, they found out genes control these two phenomena. Thus, the principles of genetics were built.
Scientists made huge efforts and much research to find out the truth behind genetics. The writer, Jeremy Cherfas guides readers to understand what they did, such as the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA and the cracking of the genome code.
Dolly, is probably the most famous sheep in the world as it is a successful animal clone. The appearance of Dolly is mainly controlled by the technique of genetics. After knowing the mechanisms behind genetics, what effects will it cause? In the final chapter of this book, it can tell you the potential uses and also the risks that can bring by the discoveries in genetics.
I think this book explores me to learn more things besides textbook. As a biology student, I have learnt about genetics, but this book can tell me deeper things about the techniques in the research of genes, the stories of scientists and the uses of genetics.
After I read this book, I have thought a lot about the impact of genetics on humans nowadays. On the positive side, the genetic technology can bring benefits to many fields. As an example, a genetic disease, cystic fibrosis can be treated by it. This technology can also be used in agriculture to increase the crops’ yield, thus the problem of insufficient food supplies can be solved. However, there are a number of drawbacks in using genetics technology. Some couples may want to use this technology to control the characters of their children, but this may lead to serious problems like the upsetting of the gender balance. Also, people are concerned about the potential risks of GM (genetically modified) food to humans, which may cause toxins or allergies.
Therefore, I guess there is still a long path for the scientists to study the genetics before it can be applied safely.
I believe this book is a desirable guide for people to understand genetics, which is a subject that will affect us more and more. Besides, this book can induce readers to think more about the pros and cons behind it. This book includes plenty of examples to illustrate its idea so I can understand the concepts clearly and I think it is good for readers.
This book told me many things about genetics, nevertheless, I suppose I should read more books that go deeper into genetics because there is still a lot of knowledge of genetics that are not contained in the book. For example, the uses of genetics technology are not enough in the book, it only covers the field of medicine.
I will recommend this book to my friends who are interested in biology or genetics as this book taught me a lot and I believe they can learn a lot too.
How do organisms evolve? How to read the sequence of genes in humans? What difficulties did scientists face during the study of genetics? If you want to know the answers of these questions, please read ‘The Human Genome’. It is an excellent guide to the chemical code of life.
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