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The oracle at Delphi posed a question concerning
a boat. If, in time, every plank has rotted and been replaced,
is the boat the same boat? Yes, the owner will say, the
vessel is not its planks but the relationship between them.
Similarly, Antoine Danchin argues in this provocative book,
life itself is not revealed just by its components -- DNA,
ribosomes, genes, cells -- but also by their relationships.
By the end of 2001, almost 500 genome programs
were completed or under way. Drawing upon what researchers
worldwide are learning from the gene sequences of bacteria,
plants, fungi, fruit flies, worms, and humans, Danchin shows
us how genomes are far more than mere collections of genes.
They are the means of transmitting the system of relationships
making up a living cell from one generation to the next.
Genomes are codes that govern the construction, operation,
and survival of cells.
The Delphic Boat shows us that life
is both a complicated piece of chemical machinery that decodes
genomes and a process that builds this machinery. The laws
of physics or chemistry can only predict so much of this
process. To truly understand life, we must understand spatial
and temporal relationships between molecules that make up
the cell, and how these molecules are coordinated. Danchin
persuades us that if we can reach this level of understanding
of genomes, we will be able to resolve the major biological
puzzle of the twenty-first century: the enigma of the living
machine that creates the living machine.
Antoine Danchin is Professor and Head
of the Unit of Genomics of Bacterial Genomes at the Pasteur
Institute in Paris and Director of the HKU-Pasteur Research
Center in Hong Kong.
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