In 2000, President Bill Clinton signaled the completion of the Human Genome Project at a cost in excess of $2 billion. A decade later, the price for any of us to order our own personal genome sequence--a comprehensive map of the 3 billion letters in our DNA--is rapidly and inevitably dropping to just $1,000. Dozens of men and women--scientists, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and patients--have already been sequenced, pioneers in a bold new era of personalized genomic medicine. The $1,000 genome has long been considered the tipping point that would open the floodgates to this revolution. Do you have gene variants associated with Alzheimer's or diabetes, heart disease or cancer? Which drugs should you consider taking for various diseases, and at what dosage? In the years to come, doctors will likely be able to tackle all of these questions--and many more--by using a computer in their offices to call up your unique genome sequence, which will become as much a part of your medical record as your blood pressure.

There is growing enthusiasm in the scientific community about the prospect of mapping and sequencing the human genome, a monumental project that will have far-reaching consequences for medicine, biology, technology, and other fields. But how will such an effort be organized and funded? How will we develop the new technologies that are needed? What new legal, social, and ethical questions will be raised? Mapping and Sequencing the Human Genome is a blueprint for this proposed project. The authors offer a highly readable explanation of the technical aspects of genetic mapping and sequencing, and they recommend specific interim and long-range research goals, organizational strategies, and funding levels. They also outline some of the legal and social questions that might arise and urge their early consideration by policymakers.

This book mainly focuses on key aspects of biomembranes that have emerged over the past 15 years. It covers static and dynamic descriptions, as well as modeling for membrane organization and shape at the local and global (at the cell level) scale. It also discusses several new developments in non-equilibrium aspects that have not yet been covered elsewhere. Biological membranes are the seat of interactions between cells and the rest of the world, and internally, they are at the core of complex dynamic reorganizations and chemical reactions. Despite the long tradition of membrane research in biophysics, the physics of cell membranes as well as of biomimetic or synthetic membranes is a rapidly developing field. Though successful books have already been published on this topic over the past decades, none include the most recent advances. Additionally, in this domain, the traditional distinction between biological and physical approaches tends to blur. This book gathers the most recent advances in this area, and will benefit biologists and physicists alike.

Within the last decade, much progress has been made in the analysis and diagnosis of human inherited disease, and in the characterization of the underlying genes and their associated pathological lesions.

In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Euan Ashley, Stanford professor of medicine and genetics, brings the breakthroughs of precision medicine to vivid life through the real diagnostic journeys of his patients and the tireless efforts of his fellow doctors and scientists as they hunt to prevent, predict, and beat disease. Since the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, the price of genome sequencing has dropped at a staggering rate. It’s as if the price of a Ferrari went from $350,000 to a mere forty cents. Through breakthroughs made by Dr. Ashley’s team at Stanford and other dedicated groups around the world, analyzing the human genome has decreased from a heroic multibillion dollar effort to a single clinical test costing less than $1,000. For the first time we have within our grasp the ability to predict our genetic future, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins, and to decode what it really means to be human. In The Genome Odyssey, Dr. Ashley details the medicine behind genome sequencing with clarity and accessibility. More than that, with passion for his subject and compassion for his patients, he introduces readers to the dynamic group of researchers and doctor detectives who hunt for answers, and to the pioneering patients who open up their lives to the medical community during their search for diagnoses and cures. He describes how he led the team that was the first to analyze and interpret a complete human genome, how they broke genome speed records to diagnose and treat a newborn baby girl whose heart stopped five times on the first day of her life, and how they found a boy with tumors growing inside his heart and traced the cause to a missing piece of his genome. These patients inspire Dr. Ashley and his team as they work to expand the boundaries of our medical capabilities and to envision a future where genome sequencing is available for all, where medicine can be tailored to treat specific diseases and to decode pathogens like viruses at the genomic level, and where our medical system as we know it has been completely revolutionized.

Leading medical genetics scholar Moyra Smith reviews current and recent work in genetics and genomics to assess progress in understanding human variation and the pathogenesis of common and rare diseases in which genetics plays a role. Smith provides an exceptional overview of the most important biomedical progress arising from the greatly increased genetic information base generated by gene mapping and the sequencing of the complete Human Genome. This book addresses into a wide spectrum of topics associated with human genetics and genomics, including: Human origins; migrations and human population diversity gained though genomic analyses. The complexities of psychiatric diseases that are influenced by genetics. The pathogenesis of late-onset neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinsonism, and ALS. Key aspects of protein misfolding. Gene-environment interactions in DNA damage and repair and DNA instability. Micro RNAs and mRNA translation. Epigenetics. New functions for old enzymes in cancer.

A Top 25 CHOICE 2016 Title, and recipient of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) Award. How much energy is released in ATP hydrolysis? How many mRNAs are in a cell? How genetically similar are two random people? What is faster, transcription or translation?Cell Biology by the Numbers explores these questions and dozens of others provid