Category: genomics
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Metaphorical genres in science communication: From gothic discovery to domestic intervention
I was idly scrolling Bluesky for some news that was not depressing when I chanced upon an article by Roger Highfield dealing with a recent advance in gene editing. It reminded me of two previous posts I had written, one back in 2016 on “Precision metaphors in a messy biological world” and another in which…
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The dark genome: A gothic tale with a happy ending
On 29 September Roger Highfield published an article for the Francis Crick Institute entitled “A message from the dark genome: The genetic ghosts that haunt and help us” (based on a chat with George Kassiotis and Samra Turajlic). This set my metaphor-whiskers twitching, as the article overflows with metaphors circling around the central one of…
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Metaphor, alchemy and lessons from the 17th century
Philip Ball has just published a magnificent book on the history of alchemy: Alchemy: An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Science. This made me think about metaphor, of course, given how central metaphorical language was to alchemical practice. In a sense, metaphor is alchemy, metaphorically speaking, as it transmutes two…
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Gene editing, gene shears and other titbits from the history of genetic engineering
I was wondering what to write about. In past blogs, I have done quite a bit of ‘conceptual history’ about metaphors or phrases like ‘imaginaries’, ‘tipping points’, ‘deficit model’, ‘trickle down economics’ and even ‘gene surgery‘ and ‘gene drive’. I have also written a few posts about gene editing or genome editing. But, come to…
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Understanding metaphors in the life sciences – a book review
I recently wrote a review of a fascinating little book, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences, by Andrew Reynolds. It appeared as part of the rather excellent series Understanding Life, published by Cambridge University Press and should be read in conjunction with another book in the series by Kostas Kampourakis entitled Understanding Genes, which came…
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Hybrids and chimeras: Mythology, history and science
Last week two papers were published about human and other chimeras, one in Cell on ‘Interspecies chimerism with mammalian pluripotent stem cells’ and one in Nature entitled ‘Interspecies organogenesis generates autologous functional islets’. The first one caused a bit of a stir in the newspapers. About 70 newspaper articles covered this potential scientific breakthrough in All…
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