Skip to main content

The Great Biologist’s Swansong

The Genetic Book of the Dead by Richard Dawkins review – the great biologist’s swansong



ll things must pass, but some leave legacies. That is the story of life on Earth. Fossilised remains of organisms represent just one of the various treasure troves of information about how life used to be, one set of clues to why it is the way it is today. In the early 20th century, genes entered the storehouse of evidence for evolution, first as theoretical particles, later as the unit of selection, and today with molecular precision. Some 165 years after Darwin’s Origin of Species, evolution by natural selection is incontrovertible, the proof of it irrefutable and bounteous.

Richard Dawkins has done the lord’s work in sharing this radical idea for more than a third of that time, partly through research, but with wider impact in his general writing. This book, one of nearly a dozen he has written about evolution, looks set to be his last (he has called a tour to support it The Final Bow).

The “dead” of the title refers not to our long departed ancestors, whose ancient DNA scientists like me now scrutinise. Instead, it’s a metaphor for genes as artefacts of past organisms and their environments. As ever, Dawkins shines his light on the gene-centric view of evolution – it is not the individual, the population or even species that are the subject of selection, but these units of inheritance composed of DNA. He showcases the effects of nature’s genetic choices in mimicry, camouflage, predation, mating – all areas that have been very well covered elsewhere (not least by Dawkins himself). He does do it well, albeit with the tone of a Victorian gentleman naturalist. All life is in these pages, and by all, I mean almost exclusively cute animals, which make up a vanishingly tiny proportion of life on Earth, but have given us so many of the vital clues to the puzzle of evolution. Bower birds, horned lizards, naked mole rats, cuckoos, mossy frogs, owls and Tasmanian tigers and bears, oh my!

It’s rich throughout and even has pretty pictures. There is, however, an incongruous, score-settling chapter about the debate around the gene-centric view, which I think will be of interest to historians of science, but sits uncomfortably here – like a sore thumb, or in Dawkins’s crabby neologism in response to the fact that sore thumbs don’t stick out, “like a Golden Delicious in a bowl of genuinely delicious apples”. When the gene-centric view emerged, complexities followed, as they always do in biology, to the extent that we don’t all even agree on the definition of a gene. Dawkins plants himself like a tree and gives no quarter. This kind of discussion is highly typical of academia, but it’s a footnote in the story of evolution, and probably should be here too. At least the irascible atheist preacher is absent in these pages. Instead the author is in his element, celebrating the wonder of evolution. The style is Dawkins through and through: professorial, elegant bordering on pompous, reverential to the grandees of evolution.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t profoundly influenced by his work from the 1980s: I consider The Blind Watchmaker to be his masterpiece, and The Extended Phenotype his best for a more specialised audience. These days, I tell students not to put Dawkins’s work on their personal statements, because if you want to study evolution, you ought to have read him – it is not impressive, it is necessary. But it was the more joyful work of Peter Medawar, Olivia Judson and most of all Steve Jones that compelled me to write about evolution myself – gritty and funny stories about people and families, where the ideas emerge from the bottom up – rather than Dawkins’s shtick: the inspirational public-school teacher for whom the British poetic canon is as important as Darwin (there is plenty of actual poetry in this book). It’s hard not to be aware of the differing backgrounds that gave rise to these two approaches, Jones working class and Welsh, Dawkins the Oxford don, a son of privilege.

This is a wonderful book in so many ways, but I didn’t love it, I think because my tastes in prose have evolved. It feels like the last instalment from a bygone era of grandiloquent science writing, one of which Dawkins was the doyen, the raconteur. It’s a greatest hits, or Dawkins by numbers, depending on your point of view.

If this is indeed Dawkins’s “swansong”, as he has hinted, then I don’t think many of us would mind too much if it was a Status Quo-style final tour that rolled on for a while yet, faithful to his obstinate advocacy for Darwin’s momentous idea. Ultimately, the fate of all organisms, according to the fixed laws of evolution, is extinction. But future scientists will surely study the words of Richard Dawkins long after he has succumbed to the forces he has done so much to celebrate.

Richard Dawkins, The Genetic Book of the Dead, evolutionary biology, natural selection, genetic legacy, evolutionary theory, biologist swansong, adaptation, genetic blueprint, evolutionary innovation, science writing, evolutionary dynamics, genetic heritage, biological diversity, Darwinian principles, genetics and evolution, species survival, evolutionary mechanisms, population genetics, evolutionary adaptation, evolutionary storytelling

#RichardDawkins, #TheGeneticBookOfTheDead, #EvolutionaryBiology, #NaturalSelection, #Genetics, #Adaptation, #BiologicalDiversity, #ScienceWriting, #EvolutionaryMechanisms, #PopulationGenetics, #DarwinianTheory, #EvolutionaryScience, #GeneticLegacy, #EvolutionaryTheory, #EvolutionaryStorytelling, #SpeciesSurvival, #GeneticBlueprint, #EvolutionaryAdaptation, #BiologistSwansong, #EvolutionaryDynamics

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fruitful innovation

Fruitful innovation: Transforming watermelon genetics with advanced base editors The development of new adenine base editors (ABE) and adenine-to-thymine/ guanine base editors (AKBE) is transforming watermelon genetic engineering. These innovative tools enable precise A:T-to-G and A:T-to-T base substitutions, allowing for targeted genetic modifications. The research highlights the efficiency of these editors in generating specific mutations, such as a flowerless phenotype in ClFT (Y84H) mutant plants. This advancement not only enhances the understanding of gene function but also significantly improves molecular breeding, paving the way for more efficient watermelon crop improvement. Traditional breeding methods for watermelon often face challenges in achieving desired genetic traits efficiently and accurately. While CRISPR/Cas9 has provided a powerful tool for genome editing, its precision and scope are sometimes limited. These limitations highlight the need for more advanced gene-e...
Post a Comment
Read more

Genetic factors with clinical trial stoppage

Genetic factors associated with reasons for clinical trial stoppage Many drug discovery projects are started but few progress fully through clinical trials to approval. Previous work has shown that human genetics support for the therapeutic hypothesis increases the chance of trial progression. Here, we applied natural language processing to classify the free-text reasons for 28,561 clinical trials that stopped before their endpoints were met. We then evaluated these classes in light of the underlying evidence for the therapeutic hypothesis and target properties. We found that trials are more likely to stop because of a lack of efficacy in the absence of strong genetic evidence from human populations or genetically modified animal models. Furthermore, certain trials are more likely to stop for safety reasons if the drug target gene is highly constrained in human populations and if the gene is broadly expressed across tissues. These results support the growing use of human genetics to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Genetics study on COVID-19

Large genetic study on severe COVID-19 Bonn researchers confirm three other genes for increased risk in addition to the known TLR7 gene Whether or not a person becomes seriously ill with COVID-19 depends, among other things, on genetic factors. With this in mind, researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn, in cooperation with other research teams from Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy, investigated a particularly large group of affected individuals. They confirmed the central and already known role of the TLR7 gene in severe courses of the disease in men, but were also able to find evidence for a contribution of the gene in women. In addition, they were able to show that genetic changes in three other genes of the innate immune system contribute to severe COVID-19. The results have now been published in the journal " Human Genetics and Genomics Advances ". Even though the number of severe cases following infection with the SARS-CoV-...
Post a Comment
Read more