Life's Greatest Secret (69 page)

.  Lincoln and Joyce (2009).

15

.  Yarus (2010), p. 97.

16

.  Noller (2012).

17

.  Yarus (2010), p. 179.

18

.  There is a massive literature on this topic. What follows is based mainly on Koonin and Novozhilov (2009), Yarus (2010) and Rutherford (2013).

19

.  See, for example, Woese (1965).

20

.  Polyanski

(2013).

21

.  Crick (1968).

22

.  Freeland and Hurst (1998), Freeland

(2000).

23

.  Yarus

(2005).

24

.  Koonin and Novozhilov (2009), p. 108. See the special issue of

in 2013, which contained four papers, each outlining a different explanation (Di Giulio, 2013b).

25

.  Behura and Severson (2013).

26

.  Cannarozzi

(2010).

27

.  Bernardi (2000).

28

.  Eyre-Walker and Hurst (2001).

29

.  Romiguier

(2010), Katzman

(2011).

30

.  Stergachis

(2013).

31

.

http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/12/12/scientists-discover-double-meaning-in-genetic-code/

.

32

.  For example, Birnbaum

(2012) and Lin

(2011).

33

.  People were also annoyed by the use of the neologism ‘duon’ to describe the codons that have both coding and transcription factor binding functions (I predict this coinage will not have a long life). For examples of spontaneous and more considered responses, see

https://twitter.com/edyong209/status/411283930294534144

and

http://pasteursquadrant.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/on-duons-and-cargo-cult-science/

.

34

.  Itzkovitz

(2010).

35

.  Mignone

(2002).

36

.  Yáñez-Cuna

(2013).

37

.  Maraia and Iben (2014).

38

.  Apter and Wolpert (1965). For a discussion of the role of metaphor in science in general, with a particular emphasis on chemistry, see Brown (2003).

39

.  For example, Fabris (2009), Gatlin (1966, 1968, 1972), Holzmüller (1984), Lean (2014), Longo

(2012), Schneider

(1986), Spetner (1968), Yockey (1992).

40

.  Maynard Smith and Szathmáry (1997).

41

.  Maynard Smith (1999, 2000a, b). Other contributors to the debates include: Bergstrom and Rosvall (2011a, b), Collier (2008), GarcÌa-Sancho (2007) Godfrey-Smith (2000a, b, 2007, 2011), Griffiths (2001), Kjosavik (2014), Kogge (2012), Levy (2011), Maclaurin (2011), Sarkar (1996a, b, 2000, 2013), Shea (2011), Stegmann (2004, 2005, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014a, b), Šustar (2007). I am grateful to Ulrich Stegmann for his comments on this section on the philosophy of genetic information; however, grumpy philosophers and others should address their criticisms to me, not him.

42

.  Maynard Smith (2000a), p. 190. This point was first made by Kimura (1961).

43

.  Maynard Smith (2000a), p. 190.

44

.  For example, Jablonka (2002).

45

.  Maynard Smith (2000a), p. 193.

46

.  Griffiths (2001), Stegmann (2014b).

47

.  For a critique of the idea of the gene as a program, see Planer (2014).

48

.  Sarkar (1996a), p. 107.

49

.  Sarkar (2000).

50

.  Godfrey-Smith (2011), p. 180.

51

.  Sarkar (1996b), p. 863.

52

.  Dudai

(1976).

53

.

http://flybase.org/reports/FBgn0000479.html

.

54

.  For example, Sarkar (1996a), Keller (1995, 2000, 2002)

55

.  Crick (1958), p. 144, pp. 138–9.

56

.  For example, Oyama (2000). For a clear introduction to this view, and to other aspects of philosophy and genetics, see Griffiths and Stotz (2013).

57

.  For example, Commoner (1968), de Lorenzo (2014), Noble (2013), Shapiro (2009).

58

.  Walker (2007).

59

.  Crabbe

(1999).

60

.  Wahlsten

(2006).

61

.  Rietveld

(2014).

62

.  Maynard Smith (2000a, b).

63

.  Noble (2002), Newman (2003).

64

.  For example, Cosentino and Bates (2012).

65

.  Cobb (2011). For the fate of the British branch of cybernetics, see Pickering (2010). Medina (2011) provides a fascinating exploration of how in the early 1970s applied cybernetics was used in the doomed attempt to peacefully transform the Chilean economy under the socialist President, Salvador Allende.

1

.  Pickstone (2001).

2

.  Gilbert (1991).

3

.  Wood

(2014).

1

Erwin Schrödinger, President Hyde and Prime Minster De Valera, Dublin 1943 © Ewald Collection/American Institute of Physics/Science Photo Library

2

Norbert Wiener © Emilio Segre Visual Archives/American Institute of Physics/Science Photo Library

3

Oswald Avery © The Oswald T. Avery Collection/US National Library of Medicine /Courtesy of Maclyn McCarty

4

Claude Shannon © Alfred Eisenstaedt/Getty Images

5

Harriett Ephrussi-Taylor, Boris Ephrussi and Leo Szilárd, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

6

Alfred Mirsky with Masson Gulland, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

7

André Boivin with Joshua Lederberg, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

8

Salvador Luria with Max Delbrück © The Salvador E. Luria Papers/US National Library of Medicine/Courtesy of Daniel D. Luria

9

Leo Szilárd with Al Hershey, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

10

Team photo of Al Hershey’s laboratory, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

11

Rosalind Franklin © The Rosalind Franklin Papers /US National Library of Medicine /Courtesy of Vittorio Luzzati

12

Maurice Wilkins © Keystone/Getty Images

13

James D. Watson, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

14

Watson and Crick © A. Barrington Brown/Science Photo Library

15

Letter by George Gamow © Courtesy estate of George Gamow. Original item held in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, Oregon State University Libraries and George Gamow Papers, collection MS0252, Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University, Washington, DC

16

George Gamow © Emilio Segre Visual Archives/American Institute of Physics/Science Photo Library

17

Crick, Rich, Orgel and Watson. Image courtesy of Alexander Rich

18

Heinrich Matthaei with Marshall Nirenberg © National Library of Medicine/Science Photo Library

19

Crick, Benzer and Jacob attending Moscow Biochemistry Congress, 1961, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

20

Crick’s annotated programme © Francis Crick Papers/Wellcome Library, London

21

François Jacob with his wife, Lise, on the beach, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

22

Jacques Monod with Sydney Brenner, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives.

23

François Jacob with Jacques Monod © AFP/Getty Images

24

Francis Crick speaking in 1963, courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives

25

Francis Crick at a house party, mid 1960s © Guy Selby-Lowndes/ Science Photo Library

26

Jacques Monod with Leo Szilárd ©Photograph by Esther Bubley. Copyright Jean Bubley

27

Crick with Benzer, courtesy of Wellcome Library, London

28

Letters between Seymour Benzer and Francois Jacob © Institut Pasteur

29

Banner in Marshall Nirenberg’s laboratory © The Marshall W. Nirenberg Papers /US National Library of Medicine /Courtesy of Marshall W. Nirenberg

30

Asilomar conference © The Maxine Singer Papers/US National Library of Medicine /Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine

While every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders of illustrations, the author and publishers would be grateful for information about any illustrations where they have been unable to trace them, and would be glad to make amendments in further editions.

The index covers the main text and glossary only; page references beyond 315 are glossary entries. The suffixes f and n indicate treatment in a figure and a footnote respectively on the pages indicated.

acquired characteristics, inheritance

138

,

260

adaptations

enzymatic (later induction)

152–3

and Lamarckian inheritance

261

adaptive hypothesis (genetic code)

293–4

adaptor hypothesis (tRNA)

121

,

135

,

209

adenine

purines

Adrian, Edgar

82n

alien life forms

275

alkaptonuria

11

Allison, Tony

126

α-helix structure

95

,

97

,

100

,

105

alternative splicing

223

,

242

Altman, Sidney

288

Alu sequences

245

amino acids

acidity and codon structure

292

code(s) for phenylalanine

174

,

182

,

184–6

,

198–9

,

206

,

208–9

defined

316

encoding by DNA base sequence

124–6

,

133

genetic code specification of x,

114

,

116–17

,

199

Miller-Urey experiments yielding

286

nature of RNA link to

292–4

need for DNA to code twenty

71–2

,

117

,

179

occurrence in comets

286

patterns, as clues to the genetic code

120

,

122–3

physical template model

72

RNA Tie Club names

118

in the RNA world

291

sequence changes in A and S haemoglobin

127–8

,

165

sequence determining protein function

133

,

263–4

synthetic RNA triplets and

210

unnatural amino acids

225

,

277–8

,

284

Anderson, Thomas

67

André, Christian

2

Anfinsen, Christian

264

anthrax

37

anti-aircraft systems

21–4

anti-sense RNA

243

anticodons

211–12

,

293

,

316

Apter, Michael

85

,

298

,

300

heritable gene silencing

259

Archaea, discovery of

238–9

Arkwright, Joseph

36–7

arsenic-based life

276

Asilomar Conference, 1975

280–1

,

285

Astbury, William

at the Cambridge SEB meeting

53–4

early DNA X-ray work

54

,

91–4

early structure for DNA

102–4

atomic bomb (Manhattan Project)

genetic code project compared to

217

George Gamow and