Novedad bibliográfica: A History of Genomics across Species, Communities and Projects
Miguel García-Sancho and James Lowe are pleased to announce that our book, A History of Genomics across Species, Communities and Projects, has now been published by Palgrave Macmillan. The book can be downloaded open-access (or purchased in paper copy) at: https://link.springer.com/book
This book is the culmination of the multi-disciplinary collaborative project ‘TRANSGENE: Medical Translation in the History of Modern Genomics’, funded by the European Research Council from 2016 to 2022. In it, we provide a comprehensive overview of the history of genomics across three different species – yeast, human and pig – and over four decades, from the 1980s to the recent past.
We provide an overview of the history of genomics across three species – yeast, human & pig – from the 1980s to the recent past. Taking an inclusive approach to capture the work of smaller-scale institutions as well as international initiatives to map & sequence genomes, we show how practices such as mapping, assembly and annotation are as essential as DNA sequencing in the history of genomics, and argue that existing depictions of genomics are too closely based on the Human Genome Project.
We explore the use of genomic tools by biochemists, cell biologists, and medical and agriculturally-oriented geneticists, and portray how genomics is entangled with the day-to-day practices and objectives of these communities. We have also uncovered often forgotten actors such as the European Commission, a crucial funder and forger of collaborative networks undertaking genomic projects.
In examining historical trajectories across species, communities and projects, the book provides new insights on genomics, its dramatic expansion during the late twentieth-century and its developments in the twenty-first century. Offering the first extensive critical examination of the nature and historicity of reference genomes, we demonstrate how their affordances and limitations are shaped by the involvement or absence of particular communities in their production.
Endorsements:
“A comparative historical analysis of the breadth of genome projects set up and carried out around the Human Genome Project is so far missing. A History of Genomics across Species, Communities and Projects fills this gap. This comparative study of yeast, pig, and human genome projects is a well-researched and impeccable piece of socio-historical scholarship that gives a balanced picture of the coming into being of genomics, a new field of research with a huge future impact on the biological and biomedical sciences, and on society as a whole.”
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
“The history of genomics, García-Sancho and Lowe argue, is more than just the history of the Human Genome Project. Diving deeply into the history of the yeast and pig genomic project next to those of the human, the authors show how multifaceted and varied the field of genomics is. What is regarded as a reference sequence, how it is turned into a useful resource and who participates in the effort changes from species to species. These insights also change our understanding of the Human Genome Project. The book is an important addition to the historiography of genomics.”
Soraya de Chadarevian, University of California Los Angeles