Tears of the Cheetah, by Stephen J. O'Brien
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Tears of the Cheetah, by Stephen J. O'Brien
Free Ebook PDF Online Tears of the Cheetah, by Stephen J. O'Brien
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.
Tears of the Cheetah, by Stephen J. O'Brien - Amazon Sales Rank: #923552 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-10-27
- Released on: 2015-10-27
- Format: Kindle eBook
Tears of the Cheetah, by Stephen J. O'Brien 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 TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful. Animal Genes and Lessons for Humans By Rob Hardy It has been but a few decades since the structure of the DNA molecule was discovered, a structure of astonishing simplicity. The complexity comes with the infinite arrangements of the four simple letters of the molecule, and the array of proteins that the arrangements code for. We are just at the beginning of understanding and using the coding, and Stephen O'Brien, head of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institutes, is one of the decoders. In _Tears of the Cheetah: And Other Tales from the Genomic Frontier_, he has told fourteen stories of deciphering DNA for the purpose of determining animal history. There are remarkable discoveries outlined here, in which O'Brien directly took part or supervised those who did (he is gracious in his acknowledgement of these colleagues), and some of the molecular science is complex and will challenge readers who are not familiar with the field. The stories themselves, however, are compelling, and will be a good introduction to just what sort of mysteries are being unlocked by our knowledge of DNA and genomes (the sum total of an animal's genes), and how the solution of the mysteries holds potential not just for intellectual satisfaction but for the benefit of humanity.The story that gives the book its title is about genetic studies of wild cheetahs, and it reflects a theme of a population bottleneck which is frequent in these pages. Because 12,000 years ago, the number of cheetahs were drastically cut (probably by an epidemic), only a handful remained to breed. When O'Brien came to investigate why cheetahs were breeding so badly in zoos and preserves, there was a shock: there was almost no variation in cheetah DNA. They were as inbred as lab mice. Some mice in China a thousand years ago, however, had been squeak by a viral plague because they had part of the virus incorporated into their own DNA; this may mean that all sorts of DNA strands of viral preventatives are awaiting our discovery, and use. There is a chapter here on Florida's endangered panthers, which like cheetahs are dangerously inbred, and the politics of conservation of species and subspecies. O'Brien explains how feline immunodeficiency virus (something like our HIV) infects many cat species but kills few of them because beneficial genetic changes are evolving. There is a fine chapter on the century of controversy about how to classify panda bears. There were good arguments from the physical characteristics of pandas that put them in the bear family, but there were others that indicated they were related more to raccoons. The argument was at a dead end; some of the means of classifying animals are based on simple human judgement and are therefore to a degree subjective. With examination of the DNA, however, O'Brien's team could show that the panda's ancestors split away from the family of bears about twenty million years ago. Pandas are bears, and the controversy is, thanks to molecular genetics, over. Looking at DNA has been the way to show that meat from endangered whales was being sold illegally in Japanese markets, forever changing the sham arguments that the Japanese used that their whaling was only for scientific research. O'Brien's team was involved in solving a murder by DNA fingerprinting, but not DNA of the murderer; O'Brien is an expert on feline DNA, and they had to make a link between the murderer and the only applicable physical evidence, cat fur on a jacket spattered by the victim's blood. The cat belonged to the murderer's family. Another chapter shows that amazingly, the human gene lines that squeaked through the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages may be the ones that are best fighting off AIDS. As both a memoir along the lines of "My Most Unforgettable Genomic Researches" and an introduction to what is going to be an increasingly important method of understanding our world's biology, _Tears of the Cheetah_ is a real success. The really tantalizing prospect, however, the main message of the book, is that humans and animals may have a genetic store of disease-fighting capacity that is only beginning to be understood, and has tremendous potential for improving health worldwide.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful. Stories combining wildlife, genetics and emerging diseases By A Customer The bits of the book I have read so far have been interesting and fun to read. I think the reader from Seattle with the poor spelling skills who believes that wildlife conservation is a "special interest" should quit griping in his anonymous envy of O'Brien, who has produced hundreds of scientific papers furthering our understanding of human diseases, in many cases by studying related diseases in wildlife. Many of the stories are highly interesting. Read the book.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Fascinating! By A Customer I enjoyed the book very much.I would recommend it highly for anyone who has an interest in understanding basic genetics or for someone who is just interested in learning something new. Dr. O'Brien is a wonderful story teller and writes in a language that is easily understandable. He slowly introduces the concepts in an interesting progressive manner which enables the reader to understand the more advanced concepts toward the end of the book. I thought the book was truly fascinating.
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