Sections

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Your Personal Genome: Googling Your DNA
• I. What Do Genes Do?
  • 2. Genes Are the Instructions for Life: AIDS and the Uncommon Man
  • 3. Proteins Are the Workhorses of the Cell: Misdiagnosis of a Metabolic Malady
  • 4. All from a Single Cell: How a Fertilized Egg Develops into a Baby
  • 5. When the Gene Is the Cure: Immunodeficiency and Gene Therapy
  • 6. When Cells Are the Cure: Diabetes and Stem Cells
• II. The Inheritance of the Gene
  • 7. When One Gene Is Enough: The Enzyme Missing in an Inherited Disease
  • 8. When One Gene Is Too Much: At Risk for Huntington’s Disease
  • 9. Genes to Remember: The Growing Burden of Alzheimer’s Disease
  • 10. Blaming Our Genes: The Heritability of Behavior
• III. Finding the Gene
  • 11. Mistakes Happen: The Mutations of Cancer
  • 12. Reshuffling the Genetic Deck: A Cancer Gene in the Neighborhood
  • 13. A Family Affair: Mapping a Gene for ALS
  • 14. Signposts for Common Disease: Focusing on Macular Degeneration
  • 15. The President Who Swallowed Rat Poison: Preventing the Next Heart Attack
• IV. The Gene in Evolution
  • 16. The Law of Evolution: Darwin, Wallace, and the Survival of the Fittest
  • 17. Around the World in Fifty Thousand Years: The Genetics of Race
  • 18. Your Personal DNA Code: Summing Up
• Notes and Further Reading