A geneticist tells the stories of men, women, and children whose genes have shaped their lives in unexpected ways.

It was while listening to a colleague tell the parents of a newborn girl that their daughter was going to die that a lifelong interest in genetic medicine was sparked in Dr Edwin Kirk. Warmth and gentleness tempered a direct, sure manner - this was the medicine he wanted to practise, where the most advanced science and the most deeply human meet. Twenty-five years later, Dr Kirk works both with patients and in the lab, and he spearheads a campaign that will change the way we think about having babies. His experience is without parallel, but it is his humour and insight that make all the difference.

Find out why Dr Kirk found himself among hundreds of people, each with a glass of poison in front of them - and how you might perform the same experiment yourself (without the poison). Learn how the realisation that a young boy wasn't short ended up saving the life of his mother - and how Angelina Jolie has saved the lives of many more. Sit in the room with Dr Kirk and his patients as they navigate the world of heartbreaking uncertainties, tantalising possibilities, and thorny questions of morality. In genetics, it is the particularities of an individual's history that matter, and here, in clear and considerate writing, those individual stories are given voice.

The authoritative account of the race to produce the vaccines that are saving us all, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Man Who Solved the Market.

Few were ready when a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China in January 2020. Politicians, government officials, business leaders, and public-health professionals were unprepared for the most devastating pandemic in a century. Many of the world’s biggest drug and vaccine makers were slow to react or couldn’t muster an effective response.

It was up to a small group of unlikely and untested scientists and executives to save civilization. A French businessman dismissed by many as a fabulist. A Turkish immigrant with little virus experience. A quirky Midwesterner obsessed with insect cells. A Boston scientist employing questionable techniques. A British scientist despised by his peers. Far from the limelight, each had spent years developing innovative vaccine approaches. Their work was met with skepticism and scorn. By 2020, these individuals had little proof of progress. Yet they and their colleagues wanted to be the ones to stop the virus holding the world hostage. They scrambled to turn their life’s work into life-saving vaccines in a matter of months, each gunning to make the big breakthrough—and to beat each other for the glory that a vaccine guaranteed.

A #1 New York Times bestselling author and award-winning Wall Street Journal investigative journalist lauded for his “bravura storytelling” (Gary Shteyngart) and “first-rate” reporting (The New York Times), Zuckerman takes us inside the top-secret laboratories, corporate clashes, and high-stakes government negotiations that led to effective shots. Deeply reported and endlessly gripping, this is a dazzling, blow-by-blow chronicle of the most consequential scientific breakthrough of our time. It’s a story of courage, genius, and heroism. It’s also a tale of heated rivalries, unbridled ambitions, crippling insecurities, and unexpected drama. A Shot to Save the World is the story of how science saved the world.

Connecting theory with real-life applications, this is the first ever textbook to equip students with a comprehensive knowledge of all the key concepts in bionanotechnology. By bridging the interdisciplinary gap from which bionanotechnology emerged, it provides a systematic introduction to the subject, accessible to students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Topics range from nanomaterial preparation, properties and biofunctionalisation, and analytical methods used in bionanotechnology, to bioinspired and DNA nanotechnology, and applications in biosensing, medicine and tissue engineering. Throughout the book, features such as 'Back to basics' and 'Research report' boxes enable students to build a strong theoretical knowledge and to link this to practical applications and up-to-date research. With over 200 detailed, full-colour illustrations and more than 100 end-of-chapter problems, this is an essential guide to bionanotechnology for any student studying this exciting, fast-developing and interdisciplinary field.

Learn how AI and data science are upending the worlds of biology and medicine In Silico Dreams: How Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology Will Create the Medicines of the Future delivers an illuminating and fresh perspective on the convergence of two powerful technologies: AI and biotech. Accomplished genomics expert, executive, and author Brian Hilbush offers readers a brilliant exploration of the most current work of pioneering tech giants and biotechnology startups who have already started disrupting healthcare. The book provides an in-depth understanding of the sources of innovation that are driving the shift in the pharmaceutical industry away from serendipitous therapeutic discovery and toward engineered medicines and curative therapies. In this fascinating book, you'll discover: An overview of the rise of data science methods and the paradigm shift in biology that led to the in silico revolution An outline of the fundamental breakthroughs in AI and deep learning and their applications across medicine A compelling argument for the notion that AI and biotechnology tools will rapidly accelerate the development of therapeutics A summary of innovative breakthroughs in biotechnology with a focus on gene editing and cell reprogramming technologies for therapeutic development A guide to the startup landscape in AI in medicine, revealing where investments are poised to shape the innovation base for the pharmaceutical industry Perfect for anyone with an interest in scientific topics and technology, In Silico Dreams also belongs on the bookshelves of decision-makers in a wide range of industries, including healthcare, technology, venture capital, and government.

Condensing 40 years of teaching experience, this unique textbook will provide students with an unrivalled understanding of the fundamentals of fluid mechanics, and enable them to place that understanding firmly within a biological context. Each chapter introduces, explains, and expands a core concept in biofluid mechanics, establishing a firm theoretical framework for students to build upon in further study. Practical biofluid applications, clinical correlations, and worked examples throughout the book provide real-world scenarios to help students quickly master key theoretical topics. Examples are drawn from biology, medicine, and biotechnology with applications to normal function, disease, and devices, accompanied by over 500 figures to reinforce student understanding. Featuring over 120 multicomponent end-of-chapter problems, flexible teaching pathways to enable tailor-made course structures, and extensive Matlab and Maple code examples, this is the definitive textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying a biologically-grounded course in fluid mechanics.

Biological systems are extremely complex and have emergent properties that cannot be explained or even predicted by studying their individual parts in isolation. The reductionist approach, although successful in the early days of molecular biology, underestimates this complexity. As the amount of available data grows, so it will become increasingly important to be able to analyse and integrate these large data sets. This book introduces novel approaches and solutions to the Big Data problem in biomedicine, and presents new techniques in the field of graph theory for handling and processing multi-type large data sets. By discussing cutting-edge problems and techniques, researchers from a wide range of fields will be able to gain insights for exploiting big heterogonous data in the life sciences through the concept of 'network of networks'.

'Thrilling, inspiring and informative page-turner.' Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker You know what went wrong. This is the untold story of what went right. Few were ready when a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China, in January 2020. Politicians, government officials, business leaders and public-health professionals were unprepared for the most devastating pandemic in a century. Many of the world's biggest drug and vaccine makers were slow to react or couldn't muster an effective response. It was up to a small group of unlikely and untested scientists and executives to save civilization. A French businessman dismissed by many as a fabulist. A Turkish immigrant with little virus experience. A quirky Midwesterner obsessed with insect cells. A Boston scientist employing questionable techniques. A British scientist resented by his peers. Far from the limelight, each had spent years developing innovative vaccine approaches. Their work was met with scepticism and scorn. By 2020, these individuals had little proof of progress. Yet they and their colleagues wanted to be the ones to stop a virulent virus holding the world hostage. They scrambled to turn their life's work into life-saving vaccines in a matter of months, each gunning to make the big breakthrough - and to beat each other for the glory that a vaccine guaranteed. A number-one New York Times bestselling author and award-winning Wall Street Journal investigative journalist, Zuckerman takes us inside the top-secret laboratories, corporate clashes and high-stakes government negotiations that led to effective shots. Deeply reported and endlessly gripping, this is a dazzling, blow-by-blow chronicle of the most consequential scientific breakthrough of our time. It's a story of courage, genius and heroism. It's also a tale of heated rivalries, unbridled ambitions, crippling insecurities and unexpected drama. A Shot to Save the World is the story of how science saved the world. ***LONGLISTED FOR THE FT MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021***

This title brings together some of the greatest minds deliberating on the workings of the full biotechnology value chain - from the point of basic and applied research right through to the point of commercial production. Central to these deliberations is the search for a comprehensive set of solutions that is aimed at mobilising South Africa's biotechnology resources effectively for social and economic growth.

If you are a biologist and want to get the best out of the powerful methods of modern computational statistics, this is your book. You can visualize and analyze your own data, apply unsupervised and supervised learning, integrate datasets, apply hypothesis testing, and make publication-quality figures using the power of R/Bioconductor and ggplot2. This book will teach you 'cooking from scratch', from raw data to beautiful illuminating output, as you learn to write your own scripts in the R language and to use advanced statistics packages from CRAN and Bioconductor. It covers a broad range of basic and advanced topics important in the analysis of high-throughput biological data, including principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling, clustering, multiple testing, unsupervised and supervised learning, resampling, the pitfalls of experimental design, and power simulations using Monte Carlo, and it even reaches networks, trees, spatial statistics, image data, and microbial ecology. Using a minimum of mathematical notation, it builds understanding from well-chosen examples, simulation, visualization, and above all hands-on interaction with data and code.

Research powers innovation and technoscientific advance, but it is due for a rethink, one consistent with its deeply holistic nature, requiring deeply human nurturing. Research is a deeply human endeavor that must be nurtured to achieve its full potential. As with tending a garden, care must be taken to organize, plant, feed, and weed-and the manner in which this nurturing is done must be consistent with the nature of what is being nurtured. In The Genesis of Technoscientific Revolutions, Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Jeffrey Tsao propose a new and holistic system, a rethinking of the nature and nurturing of research. They share lessons from their vast research experience in the physical sciences and engineering, as well as from perspectives drawn from the history and philosophy of science and technology, research policy and management, and the evolutionary biological, complexity, physical, and economic sciences. Narayanamurti and Tsao argue that research is a recursive, reciprocal process at many levels: between science and technology; between questions and answer finding; and between the consolidation and challenging of conventional wisdom. These fundamental aspects of the nature of research should be reflected in how it is nurtured. To that end, Narayanamurti and Tsao propose aligning organization, funding, and governance with research; embracing a culture of holistic technoscientific exploration; and instructing people with care and accountability.

To address the environmental, socioeconomic, and geopolitical issues associated with increasing global human energy consumption, technologies for utilizing renewable carbon-free or carbon-neutral energy sources must be identified and developed. Among renewable sources, solar energy is quite promising as it alone is sufficient to meet global human demands well into the foreseeable future. However, it is diffuse and diurnal. Thus effective strategies must be developed for its capture, conversion and storage. In this context, photosynthesis provides a paradigm for large-scale deployment. Photosynthesis occurs in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria and has evolved over 3 billion years. The process of photosynthesis currently produces more than 100 billion tons of dry biomass annually, which equates to a global energy storage rate of ~100 TW. Recently, detailed structural information on the natural photosynthetic systems has been acquired at the molecular level, providing a foundation for comprehensive functional studies of the photosynthetic process. Likewise, sophisticated spectroscopic techniques have revealed important mechanistic details. Such accomplishments have made it possible for scientists and engineers to construct artificial systems for solar energy transduction that are inspired by their biological counterparts. The book contains articles written by experts and world leaders in their respective fields and summarizes the exciting breakthroughs toward understanding the structures and mechanisms of the photosynthetic apparatus as well as efforts toward developing revolutionary new energy conversion technologies. The topics/chapters will be organized in terms of the natural sequence of events occurring in the process of photosynthesis, while keeping a higher-order organization of structure and mechanism as well as the notion that biology can inspire human technologies. For example, the topic of light harvesting, will be followed by charge separation at reaction centers, followed by charge stabilization, followed by chemical reactions, followed by protection mechanisms, followed by other more specialized topics and finally ending with artificial systems and looking forward. As shown in the table of contents (TOC), the book includes and integrates topics on the structures and mechanisms of photosynthesis, and provides relevant information on applications to bioenergy and solar energy transduction.

From breakfast toast to evening wine, yeast is the microscopic thing that we cannot live without. We knew what yeast did as an invisible brewer and baker long before we had a clue about the existence of microorganisms. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors abandoned bush meat and wild fruit in favor of farming animals and cultivating grain. Leaving the forests and grasslands, our desire for beer and wine produced by the fungus was a major stimulus for agricultural settlement. It takes a village to run a brewery or tend a vineyard. We domesticated wild yeast and yeast domesticated us. With the inevitable escape of the fungus from beer vats into bread dough, our marriage with yeast was secured by an appetite for fresh loaves of leavened bread. Over the millennia, we have adapted the technologies of brewing, winemaking, and baking and have come to rely on yeast more and more. Yeast produces corn ethanol and other biofuels and has become the genetically-modified darling of the pharmaceutical business as a source of human insulin and a range of life-saving medicines. These practical uses of yeast have been made possible by advances in our understanding of its biology, and the power of genetic engineering has been used to modify the fungus to do just about anything we wish. We know more about yeast than any other organism built from complex cells like our own. To understand yeast is to understand life. In this book Nicholas P. Money offers a celebration of our favorite microorganism.

Discover the security risks that accompany the widespread adoption of new medical devices and how to mitigate them In Do No Harm: Protecting Connected Medical Devices, Healthcare, and Data from Hackers and Adversarial Nation States, cybersecurity expert Matthew Webster delivers an insightful synthesis of the health benefits of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), the evolution of security risks that have accompanied the growth of those devices, and practical steps we can take to protect ourselves, our data, and our hospitals from harm. You'll learn how the high barriers to entry for innovation in the field of healthcare are impeding necessary change and how innovation accessibility must be balanced against regulatory compliance and privacy to ensure safety. In this important book, the author describes: The increasing expansion of medical devices and the dark side of the high demand for medical devices The medical device regulatory landscape and the dilemmas hospitals find themselves in with respect medical devices Practical steps that individuals and businesses can take to encourage the adoption of safe and helpful medical devices or mitigate the risk of having insecure medical devices How to help individuals determine the difference between protected health information and the information from health devices--and protecting your data How to protect your health information from cell phones and applications that may push the boundaries of personal privacy Why cybercriminals can act with relative impunity against hospitals and other organizations Perfect for healthcare professionals, system administrators, and medical device researchers and developers, Do No Harm is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the intersection of patient privacy, cybersecurity, and the world of Internet of Medical Things.

Keep pace with the rapid developments in bioremediation field investigations

Youll welcome the rigorous project evaluation, design and operation guidelines this valuable guide puts at your disposal. Industry veteran John Cookson delivers job-tested insights into the most effective methods and provides the step-by-step details you need to put them to work.

Using plenty of case studies to demystify complex procedures, he gives you the tools you need to evaluate the potential for biodegradation of major classes of organic compounds; conduct treatability studies; assess the feasibility of bioremediation for any situation; and much,much more.

This book reviews state of the art regarding strategies for generating and improving microbial strains designed for utilizing renewable raw materials. It discusses methods for genetically engineering of thermophilic bacteria, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli and Zymomonas mobilis, as well as approaches for obtaining useful products from these renewable raw materials based on biotechnological processes using microbes to chemically transform them. However, the efficient transformation of lignocellulosic biomass or glycerol to useful products represents a major challenge: Biomass has to be treated physically and chemically to release a mixture of sugars that potentially can be employed by the microbial production strains. These hydrolytic treatments result in diverse toxic compounds being generated and released, that negatively impact strain performance. Furthermore, most of the commonly used industrial microbes do not have the natural capacity to efficiently utilize and transform the generated sugar mixtures or glycerol. The microbial species reviewed in this book possess particular advantages as production strains and are currently employed for the synthesis of numerous biofuels and chemicals. The book reviews the general and strain-specific genetic engineering strategies for the improvement of sugar mixtures and glycerol catabolism. The issue of lignocellulosic hydrolysate toxicity is addressed in several chapters, where genetic engineering and adaptive laboratory evolution strategies are reviewed and discussed. The objective of this book is to provide the current knowledge regarding strategies for the generation and improvement of microbial strains designed for the transformation of renewable raw materials into useful products. This book aims to become a reference for researchers and students working in this field.

The book aims to provide a comprehensive view of advanced environmental approaches for wastewater treatment, heavy metal removal, pesticide degradation, dye removal, waste management, microbial transformation of environmental contaminants etc. With advancements in the area of Environmental Biotechnology, researchers are looking for the new opportunities to improve quality standards and environment. Recent technologies have given impetus to the possibility of using renewable raw materials as a potential source of energy. Cost intensive and eco-friendly technology for producing high quality products and efficient ways to recycle waste to minimize environmental pollution is the need of hour. The use of bioremediation technologies through microbial communities is another viable option to remediate environmental pollutants, such as heavy metals, pesticides and dyes etc. Since physico-chemical technologies employed in the past have many potential drawbacks including higher cost, and lower sustainability. So there is need of efficient biotechnological alternatives to overcome increasing environmental pollution. Hence, there is a need for environmental friendly technologies that can reduce the pollutants causing adverse hazards on humans and surrounding environment.

This book is a compilation of detailed articles on various products and services that can be derived from bioresources through bioprocess. It offers in-depth discussions and case studies on commercially and therapeutically important enzymes, antimicrobials, anti-cancer molecules and anti-inflammatory substances. It also includes a separate section on emerging trends in bioactive substances research. This unique book is a valuable source of information for biotechnologists and bioprocess experts as well as academics and researchers who are actively involved in product and process development.

The book focuses on novel particulate technologies for the purpose of drug delivery to humans. Nowadays, macro and nano-scale particles are being investigated for targeted delivery of small and large biological macromolecules. The targeting of drugs can minimize the dosage regimen and reduces dose related potential toxicity of drug molecules, which in turn lead to increased potential compliance. Various types of organic, inorganic and polymer particles are currently being investigated. These are attracting the attention of the research workers in the field of drug delivery science and technology. This book covers polymersomes, inorganic- organic composites, gold nanoparticles biopolymer and synthetic polymer particles etc.All aspects of drug delivery in relation to each technology have been described including these advances, Easy to read and understand the content of each chapter Rich in up-to-date information regarding their application.