Reconceiving the Gene

WARNING

You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com

Seymour Benzer's Adventures in Phage Genetics

Frederic Lawrence Holmes; Edited by William C. Summers

View Inside Format: Cloth
Price: $66.00
YUP
Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

Also Available in:
e-book

This book relates how, between 1954 and 1961, the biologist Seymour Benzer mapped the fine structure of the rII region of the genome of the bacterial virus known as phage T4. Benzer’s accomplishments are widely recognized as a tipping point in mid-twentieth-century molecular biology when the nature of the gene was recast in molecular terms. More often than any other individual, he is considered to have led geneticists from the classical gene into the molecular age.
 
Drawing on Benzer’s remarkably complete record of his experiments, his correspondence, and published sources, this book reconstructs how the former physicist initiated his work in phage biology and achieved his landmark investigation. The account of Benzer’s creativity as a researcher is a fascinating story that also reveals intriguing aspects common to the scientific enterprise.

The late Frederic Lawrence Holmes was Avalon Professor and chair for the Section of History of Medicine at Yale University. William C. Summers is professor of therapeutic radiology and molecular biophysics and biochemistry, as well as lecturer in history, at Yale University. 
 
ISBN: 9780300110784
Publication Date: June 21, 2006
352 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
47 b/w illus.