Originally posted on December 5, 2011.
Today is something special for my blog. I talk science fiction and fantasy often. But, despite the close-knit ties with world creation and sciences, I don’t often get to talk about actual science.
It is my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Misha Angrist, the author of Here is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics. I read non-fiction often as a part of freelance writing. Research is necessary.
This has made me rather jaded to quite a bit of research material that once used to be very exciting. This book managed to catch my attention right from the start, and not only because of the subject matter.
While this book is much more fact than fiction, fact is what Science Fiction (and even Fantasy) is based off of. The question of ‘what if’ is a major part of speculative fiction, and without truth to back it, this genre of writing couldn’t even exist. Even the most far-fetched tales, after all, do include a glimmer of reality and truth.
Without further ado, on to the interview!
Misha, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer these questions. Can you please tell us a little about your book?
Thanks for having me, Rebecca! My book, Here is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics follows the rise of cheap DNA sequencing and its initial foray into research on human beings and its arrival in the marketplace. It asks what genomics is and why we should care: what can a person learn from her DNA sequence? It tells the stories of a number of people who have been involved in personal genomics from the ground up. It is a narrative nonfiction book that is part science, part journalism and part memoir.
I have heard that a lot of research scientists get into a specific branch due to personal events in their lives. Unfortunately, the rumor has it that these are tragedies. Is this true? What events in your life brought you to the point that you wanted to make a study of human genes and genomes, and volunteering yours for study?
Many years ago I trained as a genetic counselor. After that I did a PhD and a postdoc in genetics. For about eight years I studied a rare genetic disease of the intestinal tract called Hirschsprung disease. As fate would have it, my nephew was born with Hirschsprung disease in 2005. He is generally healthy but he has had multiple surgeries and he and his parents have been through a lot.
To be honest, my understanding of human genes and genomes is limited to ‘the instruction manual of living things’. Sciences aren’t pushed in schools as nearly as much as they should be. Can you give us a brief lesson on genes and genomes and why this area of study needs to be pursued by more scientists?
A genome is the complete DNA sequence of any organism. DNA is a code written in four letters: A, G, C and T. We speak of “the human genome” as a shorthand, but really, except for identical twins, every person’s genome is a little different from every other person’s. We get half of our 6 billion letters of DNA from our biological mother and half from our biological father. About 2% of our genome actually corresponds to genes–individual units of heredity–that code for proteins like collagen and hemoglobin. We don’t know what most of the rest of our DNA does. These are two of the great challenges: understanding what all that DNA does and understanding what all of the variation in our genome does.
Off of the top of your head, If you had to pick one scientifically accurate Science Fiction book relating to genes and genomes, which book would you pick? What is so accurate about this book? Do you feel that this book was ahead of its time?
That’s an excellent question…which I’m going to dodge. In literary fiction, I think Allegra Goodman’s Intuition really captures the life of a postdoc in a modern lab in a way that really hadn’t been told before. As far as more traditional science fiction goes, I think Jurassic Park is a fun thought experiment: what if we could clone dinosaurs? Scientifically there’s a lot of hand-waving (frog DNA etc), but it’s something that is still a plausible what-if question.
On the flip side of the coin, there are a lot of inaccurate Science Fiction novels relating to genes and genomes out there. What book do you feel is the worst offender, and why?
Gosh, I’d be hard-pressed to pick just one…Chromosome 6 is pretty ridiculous. And not to let Michael Crichton off the hook: Next is so over the top that you wonder if it shouldn’t have gone to straight to video. That said, I confess that I’m quite curious about Micro, which is the book Crichton was working on when he died and that was finished by Richard Preston, who, in my opinion, is a master.
We couldn’t talk about Science Fiction books and accuracy without repeating the process for movies. What one movie would you pick as the most scientifically accurate Science Fiction film?
My colleague David Goldstein and I show GATTACA to our nonmajors human genome class. There are a few liberties taken with the science, but again, it asks a question that is fair to ask: what if society were stratified based mainly on DNA? And the film asks it in a stylish and compelling way. The Boys from Brazil was ahead of its time as far as thinking about genetic determinism and environment. I would also put in a word for Ron Moore’s re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, which grapples with what it means to be human and singlehandedly deconstructed so many of the reigning sci fi cliches.
Which film would win the prize for the worst offender?
Hoo boy. There are so many stinkers to choose from. Godsend comes to mind (it also raises the oft-asked question: what the hell happened to Robert De Niro?). Sphere with Dustin Hoffman babbling on incoherently is so bad that it’s almost good. And I suspect that Battlefield Earth didn’t win many converts to Scientology.
I have a little bit of a tradition of asking victims . . . er, volunteers a question to conclude an interview. Stuck on an empty island is overdone. You are trapped in an elevator and the emergency phone doesn’t work. You have one individual with you. This individual can be a super hero, an author, a mad scientist – anyone you want, dead or alive. Who would you want with you in the elevator and why? Would you pick someone to talk with, or would you escape? You’ve a world of possibilities!
I’m a bit claustrophobic so I’d probably pick someone with the skills to get me out. Houdini, perhaps? David Blaine? Probably the safest bet would be MacGyver.
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions!
Thanks!