Time, Love, Memory: The Discovery of Behaviour Genes Book

After the unfortunate incident with the matter transporter, Seth Brundle--the anxious scientist in David Cronenberg's version of the The Fly--asks his computer what's happening to him. The answer: "Brundlefly: integration at the molecular genetic level." Now we know that some of the genes, at least, of fly and human really are the same. Nobel prizes have gone to the researchers who showed this for genes controlling development. Jonathan Weiner's fine new book is about the less well-known possibility that the same holds true for behaviour. It follows the work of the remarkable American Seymour Benzer, whose research career spans physics, molecular biology and, central here, the genetics of the fruit fly Drosophila. The first great geneticists of the 20th century were all Lords of the Fly and Benzer decided to use the same tiny insect to tease out the links between DNA and decision-making. Now, he and his students have a fix on genes which appear to control such elemental behaviours as time-keeping, sex and learning, in flies at any rate. Weiner's implication that this opens the way for genetic dissection of behaviour in humans will be controversial--we are slightly more complicated beasts, after all. But his tale is elegantly told, as you would expect from the Pulitzer-wining author of The Beak of the Finch, and rich in the doing of science. --Jon Turney.Read More