Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself
*Starred Review* The first part of this book relates what’s been learned about the origin of life on earth; the second, what’s being done to modify existing life-forms and produce new ones. Though both are engaging, many may find the first more dazzling. Rutherford starts small, discussing the cell and how it is begotten, not created but ultimately taking in genetics and DNA as well as the earth’s physical history before life emerged from a microscopic chamber at the bottom of the sea, four million years ago. The second part lacks the first’s sweeping grandeur, being set in a much narrower time frame, the 30 years bioengineering has been with us. That’s long enough, however, to have seen gene-splicing give way to synthetic biology at the field’s cutting-edge as the spider-goat and biofuels have been supplanted in novelty by the successful copying by RNA of a molecule formed by swapping in a different amino acid for one of the four naturally found in the DNA sequence, which ultimately suggests a different basis for life, one that is created, not begotten by intelligent (human) design. Creation is the first book by this geneticist-journalist with two well-received BBC4 series, The Gene Code and The Cell, to his credit. May it augur many more top-drawer science books by Rutherford. --Ray Olson