Play Book Tag discussion

Fascinating. Nicely overlaps both genetics and behaviourism in their early stages. Belyaev was decades ahead of his time in his thinking and was already suggesting epigenetics as a cause of changes in gene expression rather than wholesale different genes as causes for variation. How sad he didn't live long enough to see epigenetics become a major field of study. He was also ahead of his time by recruiting a woman (Ms Trut) to lead a major scientific project. Her work on silver foxes lasted from her youth to her death and showed extreme dedication both to her work and the foxes she cared for. An amazingly inspirational pair of people who, despite the hardships they faced, have contributed significantly to science and have generated enough questions and raised enough doubt to keep the curious occupied for decades to come.
The book is fantastic but honest and does have some confronting scenes where bad things happened. However, it is not gratuitous just honest about the difficulties of working in those conditions especially at those times in history, and how evil some people are.

Nice review! This sounds like something I would like. I had it on my list for last year but didn’t get to it. I’d like to learn more about epigenetics.

NancyJ wrote: "Nice review! This sounds like something I would like. I had it on my list for last year but didn’t get to it. I’d like to learn more about epigenetics."

I'd been meaning to read it since 2022......
It was worth waiting to be in the right headspace. Epigenetics is a fascinating field with so much more to learn. It does require a fair bit of chemistry background to understand the actual processes involved but even understanding the basics of how we can adapt environmental exposure to reduce chances of certain genes being "switched on" is interesting. I'd love to see it taught earlier so young people can use the knowledge to make informed decisions to reduce risk of certain disorders.