The Gene

Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene: An Intimate History (2016) provides a history of the human gene, and what it means for the future of humanity if we can manipulate our own genetic code. Receiving overwhelming praise upon publication for its unique narrative style, the book received award nominations, including the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction. Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher at Colombia University Medical Center. His debut, The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

Like The Emperor of Maladies, The Gene has a unique narrative style. A biography of the human gene through the centuries, it focuses on our never-ending quest to find answers to human heredity questions. The central thesis is that understanding the gene, or at least our attempts to understand it, has a profound effect on our lives and how we shape our society—for better or worse.

The book is split into six parts, charting scientific studies into the human gene from around 1865 to the present day. Each part focuses on the specific discoveries made within a specific time period, and how these discoveries have shaped our understanding of human heredity. Part 6, the final section, considers what mankind will do with its expanding knowledge of the gene, and if our actions will make us reconsider what it means to be a human.



Mukherjee begins with a brief history of how human heredity affects his own family. His cousin, Moni, is a diagnosed schizophrenic, and many family members refuse to accept this diagnosis. They refuse to accept it because he is not the only family member with schizophrenia, and they do not want to believe that it is hereditary. Other illnesses affecting the family include bipolar disorder and manic depression; they do not want to feel that every generation of the family is susceptible to mental illness.

However, inherited conditions are the reality of the human gene, and some of us are genetically predisposed to conditions even if they never materialize. Mukherjee knows this very well. He specializes in oncology, or cancer biology, and much of his work turns on normal and abnormal genes. Combined with his family history, this cancer research inspired Mukherjee to study the gene itself in more detail.

Part 1 begins in 1864, when George Mendel, living in a monastery in the Czech Republic, runs experiments in his flower garden. He is experimenting on pea shoots, and he wants to understand what makes plants and growing things the way they are. It has already been established that breeding animals and plants in certain ways can promote desirable traits, but no one understands the mechanics of this.



Mendel, identifying what is later called the gene, establishes many rules of heredity that we still rely on today. The book then moves on to consider Darwin’s theory of evolution, and how this connects with the idea of favorable breeding and “survival of the fittest.” Still, it is a long time before scientists refer to genes again, and Mendel dies in obscurity.

The book then jumps forward in time to a period when scientific advances are accelerating. Before the outbreak of World War II, genes are very much a hot scientific topic again, and both British and American scientists want to manipulate genes to create strong, intelligent, advanced humans. This culminates in the atrocities of World War II, including genocide and violent, sickening experiments.

Once DNA is identified as the source of genetic information, or genetic code, the scientific community agrees upon definitions of genes, DNA, and the double helix structure that we’re all so familiar with today. Since we understand that genes are basic units of hereditary information, we also know that genes send messages for protein synthesis—proteins that let us function and take shape. We are a long way from Mendel’s early pea shoot experiments, although there is plenty that we still do not understand about our own genetic code.



In the latter sections of the book, Mukherjee considers why genetic variations, or mutations, are so important to our survival as a species, and why manipulating genes to create so-called ‘perfect’ humans is a terrible idea. Mukherjee explains that nature provides these mutations so the species can thrive if something changes in our global environment—some people will have the genetic code allowing them to live on and populate the earth. Manipulating genes, then, erases this possibility and is catastrophic for our survival.

Mukherjee admits that our understanding of human heredity, including how it affects disease, inherited conditions, and evolution, is still very much in its infancy. However, since we can all trace our origins back to a single human female, living in Africa over 200,000 years ago, we are more alike than we think, and understanding this reality could be the key to further scientific breakthroughs.