The Gene Code

Dr Adam Rutherford takes the viewer on a rollercoaster ride as he explores the consequences of one of the biggest scientific projects of all time - the decoding of the entire human genome in 2000.

The Gene: An Intimate History is a four-hour documentary from Ken Burns and Barak Goodman, adapted from the award-winning book of the same name by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. The series tells the story of the rapid evolution of genetic science …

Brings vividly to life the story of today's revolution in medical science through present-day tales of patients and doctors at the forefront of the search for genetic treatments, interwoven with a compelling history of the discoveries that made this possible and the ethical challenges raised by the ability to edit DNA with precision.

Part Two begins with the story of the signature scientific achievement of our time: the mapping of the human genome. As scientists learn to read the genetic code, they grapple with the dangers inherent in increasingly sophisticated and easily available …

The dynamic nature of decoding the information in messenger RNA was unanticipated at the time the genetic code was first deciphered. We now know that both the meaning of individual codons and the framing of the readout process can be modified by information in specific messenger RNAs. This book describes this "Recoding" phenomenon, revealing the diversity of an additional layer of information in mRNAs that serves to enrich the expression of genes. Knowledge of recoding is essential for understanding the organization and expression of genes in viruses and all organisms ranging from bacteria to archeae to plants to humans, making Recoding pertinent to all biological sciences.