Ipromised in my new thriller "Biohack" that I'd do something rarely seen in crime fiction: provide a bibliography-like list of resources I relied on during the months I spent researching the science behind the novel.
I'll do that below, and in part two I'll also include a list of bioethics experts who've begun wrestling with the ethical issues posed by recent advances in CRISPR and genetic engineering.
Top books about CRISPR & gene editing
In addition to the titles listed below, I also found a number of podcasts to be particularly illuminating, including Sam Harris's "Waking Up" podcast (including his interviews with Siddhartha Mukherjee and Jennifer Doudna), Kira Dineen's "DNA Today" podcast, Future Tense and RadioLab's dissection of the ethics of CRISPR, and several others.
Here are some of the readings that helped inform the scientific underpinnings of "Biohack":
The Gene: An Intimate History
By Siddhartha Mukherjee
(Don't you love the title?)
A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution
By Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
(See my review.)
Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves
By George M. Church and Ed Regis
Evolving Ourselves: Redesigning the Future of Humanity-One Gene at a Time
By Juan Enriquez
GMO Sapiens: The Life-Changing Science of Designer Babies
By Paul Knoepfler
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
By Bill McKibben
The Genomics Age: How DNA Technology Is Transforming the Way We Live and Who We Are
By Gina Smith
Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family
By Lee Silver
The Perfect Baby, The Human Cloning Debate and Bioethics for Beginners
By Glenn E. McGee
"Redesigning the Self: The Promise and Perils of Genetic Enhancement"
By David J. Rothman and Sheila Rothman
(Oddly, the book no longer seems to be available.)
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
By Francis Fukuyama
Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome with Crispr-Cas9
By James Kozubek
How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction
By Beth Shapiro
Biocode: The New Age of Genomics
By Dawn Field and Neil Davies
And finally, this title added nicely to the grave team research I conducted online and in person:
Where Are They Buried?: How Did They Die? Fitting Ends and Final Resting Places of the Famous, Infamous, and Noteworthy
By Tod Benoit