Press Release

Chance in the House of Fateby Jennifer Ackerman

• Introduction• About the Author• A Conversation with Jennifer Ackerman• Do You Know About?

"An exploration filled with passionate wonder." — San Francisco Chronicle

"Tying together the famous and the forgotten, the microscopic and the vast, Chance in the House of Fate is a fascinating book." — New York Times Book Review

"An amazing look at how we got where we are . . . An ambitious book . . . a beautiful book." — Chicago Tribune

Introduction

Hidden in the hype surrounding the race to map the human genome is the incredible discovery that the human species is connected to the rest of life in profound and surprising ways. While stories abound about the potential to cure diseases, few writers have stepped back to examine the connections between humans and all other forms of life.

In spite of our outward differences, humans share genes and proteins, cell parts and mechanisms, with organisms as lowly as bread yeast. Some genes can even be swapped—for example, between humans and fruit flies—with no loss of function at all. Such inherited "family" traits reach back, relatively unchanged, through several hundred million years of evolution, back to the very roots of the tree of life.

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In Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity, now available in paperback, acclaimed science and nature writer Jennifer Ackerman explores the mysterious, primordial ties that bind us to all other creatures on the planet.

Embarking on an intimate journey inside the microscopic world of molecular biology, she weaves a mesmerizing narrative that is at once personal and poetic, practical and philosophical, scientific and lyrical.

In the complex story of evolution, random — or "chance" — genetic mutations of ancestors become, over the course of millennia, the "fate" of subsequent generations of descendants. Chance in the House of Fate tells such a tale. Not only is it a fascinating exploration of heredity and the scientific information that is just now emerging, but it is also a contemplative inquiry into humanity's true place in the order of the world. Among the mysteries Ackerman contemplates are:

• What allows an egg to unfurl into a breathing, feeling being?• Why do human cells respond to the chemical messages of certain plants?• How do our individual cells keep time with the rhythm of the planet?• Why is sex such a popular form of reproduction in nature?• How do mothers immediately recognize the smell of their infant?• How does an egg "talk" to sperm?• What makes us all age?

Ackerman spent three years gathering information from advanced research laboratories around the world. What she found was that scientists are seeing the same ancient molecules in everything, from fungi to human beings. But far more than a report from the field, her book offers an encompassing vision of what these resemblances mean for our everyday lives. By studying simpler organisms, we may be able to more easily identify the root of certain diseases and eradicate them. The implications are endless.

We are connected biologically with the whole of the natural world. For Ackerman, this is cause for awe and wonder. Writing in the tradition of Lewis Thomas, Annie Dillard, and Loren Eiseley, she leaps with uncanny grace from biology to literature to the history of science, all the while drawing on personal experience and reflection. Her own pregnancies, her mother's battle with cancer, her sister's mental retardation, all lend immediacy and relevance to the science she so beautifully illuminates.

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Chance in the House of Fate belongs on the bookshelves of all readers who are interested in new scientific discoveries, genetics, philosophy, literary nonfiction, and nature.

About the Author

Jennifer Ackerman has contributed to National Geographic, the New York Times, and many other publications. Her writing has been collected in several literary anthologies, among them The Nature Reader, Best Nature Writing, From the Field, and The Beach Book: A Literary Companion. Her first book, Notes from the Shore, which the Washington Post described as "a joy to read," examined the natural life of the mid-Atlantic region.

Ackerman is a member of the editorial board of the University Press of Virginia and has served as an editorial consultant for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which publishes a series of magazines designed to introduce the general reader to new research in genetics. She is a frequent lecturer and has spoken at Harvard, MIT, the University of Virginia, The Nature Conservancy, and other organizations.

Ackerman won a Bunting Fellowship and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to write Chance in the House of Fate, her second book. She lives with her husband, the novelist Karl Ackerman, and their two daughters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Do You Know About?

CLOCK GENESBiological clocks tick away in every cell of virtually every living thing, from bread mold to humans. Recently, scientists have found that the clocks of all organisms share universal molecular mechanisms, old and of vast importance, which tune our bodies to the cycles of time.

SECRETS OF AGINGNot long ago, biologists found a gene that when mutated will double the lifespan of a worm. Recent studies suggest that mammals may share similar aging pathways.

THE DIALOGUE OF SPERM AND EGG

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In sea urchins and other "lower" organisms, fertilization begins with a chemical "come hither" signal from the egg. In the last five years, scientists have learned that in a variety of animals, humans included, an egg "talks" to the sperm it meets and through this conversation selects one competent partner out of millions.

HOX GENESThese powerful little fragments of DNA orchestrate the dazzling feat of development, shaping the body plans of creatures from worms to cows. The Hox genes of creatures separated by more than half a billion years of evolution function in virtually identical fashion. Put a human Hox gene into a developing fruit fly embryo and it will carry out the job of the fly's own gene without a hitch, making a perfect fly body.

EYELESS/PAX 6 GENESThese powerful master genes of sight, which shape the marvelous globe of the human eye, are universal among animals. They carve the huge camera-style eye of the Australian net-casting spider and the compound eye of the fruit fly. Ancient indeed, these genes were probably present in a common ancestor from Precambrian times. Hundreds of millions of years later, they are still performing their crucial function in granting us all access to light.

PHEROMONESIn the last year or so, scientists have found concrete evidence that humans make pheromones and, like so many other animals, may use them to send and receive messages about the nature of self, family, and mate.

CHEMICAL CROSSTALKThe cells of the human heart and brain understand and respond to the chemical messages of the poppy plant and the bark of the willow tree.

PROTEINSBiologists have lately discovered that proteins in species from bacteria to humans share common structural motifs, tiny architectural details that determine whether cells allow nutrients in, repel bacteria, grow normally, or become malignant. They dictate whether sperm enter an egg and help a baby's brain cell find its way from the eye to the visual cortex.

MHC GENESThis complex of linked genes make molecules of "self," which help the immune system distinguish between the body's own cells and intruders. They

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also guide a mouse in selecting its mate and may account for the ability of a mother, only ten minutes after giving birth, to recognize by smell alone the blanket that swaddled her infant. Recent work suggests that humans, like mice, may detect small differences in the MHC genes and use this information in matters of mate choice and kin selection.

A conversation with Jennifer Ackerman, author of Chance in the House of Fate

Q) How did the idea for the book originate?

A) The idea for Chance grew out of my desire to make sense of the new revolution in biology—the profusion of discoveries in genetics and the story emerging from laboratories everywhere of the remarkable resemblances that unite all living things. I wanted to explore how these new biological findings affect our understanding of family, heredity, and our place in the natural world.

I consider myself a sleuth in the world of science. Most people don't have time to read and absorb the many articles and books reporting the new findings in biology. My job in this book was to pore over the technical science to find the relevant and fascinating stories and present them in engaging form.

I love to collect news of biological surprises, discoveries that turn the flank of science and shed light on the way we think of ourselves and other organisms. In the last decade, I saw a pattern emerge in my clippings and collections—one discovery after another of striking and unlikely biological similarities between humans and other species. I'm not talking about chimpanzees and apes, but creatures such as mice, flies, worms, even the yeast we use to raise our bread. Scientists suspect that humans and mice share 85 percent of their genetic material; humans and fruit flies, 60 percent; and humans and yeast, 46 percent.

Chimps are one thing; yeast is quite another. As a naturalist with a humanities background, I'm interested in the riddle of humanity's place in the natural world—and in particular, our view of it. Here, nested in my files, was a solid egg of evidence that we're connected with other creatures not by something as slippery as "animal nature" but by real, measurable things, such as the genes that make our eyes or keep rhythms in our bodies or give

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us our tidy bilateral symmetry—a notion with profound implications for the way we think of ourselves and our relations with the rest of life.

Q) What personal reasons did you have for writing this book?

A) Years ago, my family underwent genetic counseling after the birth of my profoundly retarded younger sister, Beckie. In preparation for the counseling, we dove into a quick study of genetic traits. With the help of a counselor, we searched our family tree for relatives with disabilities resembling Beckie's. The experience opened a door for me to the world of genealogy and heredity. In this book, I wanted to investigate the rash of new findings on genes linked with diseases and behavioral and personality traits, and to make sense of what I found. Are there genes "for" particular diseases and personality traits? What genes might have been involved in my sister's retardation, in the cancer that killed my mother, and the Alzheimer's disease that struck my grandmother? Are the letters DNA the key to all the familial secrets of life? I wanted to explore the traits passed down through families—the ones we're born into and the ones we create—and also the bigger, deeper inheritance that ties us to the rest of life.

Q) Why write this book now?

A) The twentieth century was considered the century of physics. The twenty-first has been called the century of biology, and this decade, the decade of the genome. Scientists have made tremendous progress in decoding the "books of life" of assorted creatures—including humans—and comparing them. In Chance, I wanted to translate the complex science of our age into terms accessible to people with little or no science background. Most of us know DNA as a molecule with an unpronounceable name. What does it really do? What is its role in our bodies and in shaping the traits of our families? What is the significance of knowing the DNA sequences of various organisms? What does it mean to our lives? Our heritage? Our families? Our sense of our place in nature?

Q) Where did you get the title Chance in the House of Fate?

A) The title has its roots in the idea that nature is a kind of house of fate, with genes as its building blocks, genes that arose by chance—and that nature is shaped by chance still. Likewise, fate represents the inherent stability of DNA, its stunning ability to copy itself faithfully and pass itself along from generation to generation, while chance represents the double

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helix's knack for error and change, which allows life to diversify.

Chance in the House of Fate is the title of a found-object sculpture created by an artist friend of mine, and I use it as a central metaphor in the book. The sculpture is an old wire bingo machine filled with marbles and mounted on a high architectural stand. Beneath the machine is a cup, and crowning the assemblage is a tobacco chopper with a blade like a guillotine. Crank the shaft to twirl the bingo machine and, if chance is with you, a marble may drop neatly into the little cup. But the act is made uncomfortable by the fateful presence of the tobacco blade, which, with sufficient jiggling—one imagines with a flinch—might also fall.

Q) What are the ramifications of the recent discovery that we are biologically closer to other organisms than we ever imagined?

A) The ramifications are rich, for our understanding of the way the body works in health and disease, and also for how we see ourselves in the world.

When scientists find a gene in a worm or a fly that matches a human gene, they can study that gene and its function more easily in the simpler organism than they can in humans. In this way, they've learned about how we see, smell, grow, learn, heal, remember, age, and die. Scientists have found genes in yeast matching certain human genes, which, when mutated, are known to cause disease. By "knocking out" a gene that makes an enzyme involved in modifying sugar molecules on the surface of cells, researchers recently produced a disorder in a mouse that resembles the human autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus. Of the 289 known human disease genes, many have direct counterparts in the fruit fly. Scientists hope to plumb the basic workings of these genes and learn what happens when they're disabled, which may lead to new abilities to diagnose and treat human disease.

That all living things are related may not be a new notion, but it's still deeply provocative—neither well understood nor well accepted. We still tend to set up a false dichotomy of nature and man. Some of us still question the idea of a common biological ancestor. While there may be little debate among scientists about evolution as the engine of nature, there is still debate about it in society. The likenesses of living things described in this book proclaim loudly that the divide between human and nonhuman is not the gulf we once thought it was, that we all share evolutionary ancestors, that we are all close relatives—not just man and ape, but man and fly.

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Q) Who has been influential in your writing?

A) When I was fifteen years old, my father gave me a slim little book that affected me deeply. It was Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell, a collection of essays on biomedical and philosophical contemplations that had first appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Over the past twenty-five years, I have come back to Lives of a Cell and to Thomas's other writings often, because I love both his language and his outlook. Thomas brought a poet's sensibility to his science essays. He wrote of ants and microbes and "winter-carapaced" people with grace and style and wonderful dry humor. I shared Thomas's beliefs that our view of ourselves—of our bodies and our place in the natural world—has somehow become unfocused and unreliable. I admired his ability to restore proper perspective about the nature of health and disease and about the connections and dependence between living things—and hoped to do the same in my own writing.

"As long as we are bewildered by the mystery of ourselves, and confused by the strangeness of our uncomfortable connection to all the rest of life," Thomas once wrote, "we cannot be said to be healthy animals in today's world." Chance in the House of Fate aims to offer perspective on the startling new evidence of our connection to the rest of life and, in so doing, to shed light on the mystery of ourselves.

Q) How did you research this book? Any special travel?

A) To research this book, I read widely—science journals, history of science, literature, philosophy. I ventured into laboratories to find out what DNA really looks like, to talk to an evolutionary chemist who compares genes and proteins to see how closely related they might be, and how old, to watch mice high on crack to explore the similarities with the behavior of humans high on cocaine. I met with scientists who are studying the ways in which primates recognize their kin and those probing the genes that shape the limbs of butterflies, lobsters, octopuses, indeed all creatures. I drew on my journalistic travels to China to look at fossils, and to Germany to interview "the Lady of the Flies," The Nobel laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, who studied fruit flies to learn the secrets of the genes that pattern the early embryo.

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Q) There are so many astonishing facts about nature and biology in this book. What most surprised you in your research?

A) What surprised and delighted me again and again was the evidence of nature's ingenuity in using the old to make the new. Take, for example, Hox genes, the powerful little fragments of DNA that orchestrate the dazzling feat of development, shaping the body plans of creatures from worms to cows: the Hox genes of creatures separated by more than half a billion years of evolution function in virtually identical fashion. New forms arise in evolution not necessarily from changes in the genes themselves, but from small, subtle shifts in the way they are deployed—when they're turned on and where—in the developing organism.

Or consider the eye. New findings show that the marvelous single-lensed globe of the human eye and the multifaceted compound eye of the fruit fly share an ancestral eye gene that still works in the shaping of these radically different eye types. Evolution often brings newness into the world not by creating great numbers of new genes but by fooling with old ones, like Shakespeare using a forgotten story to create a masterpiece.

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