Fly: The Unsung Hero of 20th-Century Science FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
This book is a very funny, irreverent, and, yes, intelligent explanation of the past 100 years of biological science and the oddball assortment of scientists who revolutionized the field. Martin Brookes is an evolutionary biologist and a very good writer to boot. He describes the century-long love affair between science and Drosophila melanogaster (which, in case you need to know, means "black-bellied dew lover"), beginning with the man who made the fruit fly famous, one Thomas Hunt Morgan. Center stage, however, is the ubiquitous fruit fly itself, and its role in the major biological breakthroughs of the 20th century.
The story begins at the close of the Victorian era. As the scientific focus shifted from the findings of theologically oriented naturalists to laboratory biologists, the rigors of carefully describing God's creations in their natural environment were replaced by an equal obsession with carefully controlled experiments and manipulations, and a need for organisms that lent themselves to laboratory life. The fruit fly, with its short life span, enormous procreative capacity, and cheap upkeep (rotten fruit does nicely, thank you), was found to be the perfect answer. So, between 1910 and 1915, Morgan and his research team at Columbia University bred billions of flies with which they linked Mendelian inheritance with the chromosome theory of heredity. In the process, the fruit fly was elevated to the laboratory organism of choice.
Since then, the fruit fly has taught us a thing or two about such diverse subjects as sexual warfare, growing old gracefully, and getting high on crack. (For those who are interested: Under the influence of crack cocaine, the flies groom themselves maniacally. At high doses they walk backward, sideways, and in circles.) Fly is fun and informative, and it made me laugh out loud on a city bus. Not bad for a book about an insect. (Judith Estrine)
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A biological beacon for generations of scientists, the fruit fly has been at the center of major genetic studies, on everything from mating and aging to mutations and dying. In Fly, the tiny creature finally receives the credit it deserves for its contribution to the field of genetics.
This delightful volume takes readers on a historical tour of genetic mapmaking—from Thomas Hunt Morgan's forays into experimental biology in 1910 to the DNA sequencing in the 1970s and the recent unveiling of the first draft of the human genome. Fly is a biography of a species that provides a uniquely witty, insightful perspective on genetics, the most fascinating, controversial, and revolutionary science of all.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Like Zelig, the ubiquitous guy who turns up at historical moments, Brookes's fruit fly, "a reliable, if unremarkable, laboratory workhorse," is present for some of the great moments in 20th-century science. The fruit fly came to the American South with the slave trade and, later, to the Northeast with the growing trade in rum, sugar and fresh fruits. Around the turn of the century, Victorian biology, with its emphasis on theology and obsessive anatomical description akin to biological stamp collecting, was giving way to experimentalism and Darwin's evolution; at the same time Gregor Mendel's ideas about genetic inheritance were just coming into fashion. Enter Columbia University scientist Thomas Hunt Morgan and his fruit flies and his experiments that would, Brookes suggests, help usher in the age of experimental biology. Brookes, a popular science writer for New Scientist, BBC Wildlife Magazine and author of What's the Big Idea? Genetics, traces the fruit fly's role in the study of mutation to identify control genes, detailing Hermann Muller's X-ray experiments in the 1920s, and the Nobel Prize-winning work of Ed Lewis, Christiane N?sslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus in the 1970s. Brookes explores Russian-born Theodosius Dobzhansky's work in the 1930s that identified genetic diversity in species and genes as "the currency of evolutionary change"; he includes chapters on studies of fruit fly mating, aging and the genetics of behavior, and ends with the complete sequencing of the fruit fly genome. Brookes appears to have picked a rather narrow topic to write about, which may limit his readership. But his book's enigmatic title alone should warrant a second look, and book buyers just mightget hooked. Brookes writes with humor and economy. He places the unsung fruit fly into the much broader and immediate history of the rapidly advancing fields of biology and genetics. (Sept. 11) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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