Greg Gibson
Greg Gibson is Professor of Genetics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and of Integrative Biology at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is a leader in the new field of genomics, studying how interactions between genes and the environment affect human health and organismal evolution. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and did postdoctoral work at Stanford University. He is on the editorial boards of PLoS Genetics, Current Biology, Genetics, and other leading journals, and with Spencer V. Muse, coauthored A Primer of Genome Science, one of the field’s leading textbooks, now in its third edition.
Books
It Takes a Genome
Human beings have astonishing genetic vulnerabilities. More than half of us will die from complex diseases that trace directly to those vulnerabilities, and the modern world we've created places us at unprecedented risk from them.
In It Takes a Genome, Dr. Greg Gibson posits a revolutionary new hypothesis: our genome is out of equilibrium, both with itself and its environment. Simply put, our genes and our cultures are at war. Our bodies were never designed to subsist on fat and sugary foods; our immune systems weren't designed for today's clean, bland environments; our minds weren't designed to process hard-edged, artificial electronic inputs from dawn 'til midnight. And that's why so many of us suffer from chronic diseases that barely touched our ancestors.
Bonus Content
It Takes a Genome,
“The Adolescent Game”
Greg Gibson explains that disease arises because humans, like all other species on the planet, are an unfinished symphony. Read More…
What Are People Saying?
“Along with a tour through the genome, Gibson’s wise and witty book makes some controversial predictions (“Within a decade, one percent of all humans will be HIV positive”) and profiles cutting-edge methods for combating chronic illness (also including Depression and Alzheimer’s) that should clarify concepts for the novice and satisfy gene research and therapy professionals.”
- Publishers Weekly , 1/19/09
“Gibson does an admirable job of making complicated genetic processes accessible, but some biological descriptions may still be beyond laypeople.”
-Library Journal, 1/16/09
“A compelling, witty, and reader-friendly explanation of how our genes, fashioned for living in the Stone Age, are not so well-suited to life in the Modern Age.”
—Sean B. Carroll, author of The Making of the Fittest and Remarkable Creatures
“It’s taken thirty years, but we finally have in Greg Gibson’s It Takes a Genome what is truly a biologist’s response to the single-gene focus of Richard Dawkin’s early classic The Selfish Gene. And what a response it is! In Gibson’s world, we see a genome as an integrated whole, making sense only when the constituent parts, the genes, are considered in their full genomic and environmental context. It is an engaging, fascinating, accessible, and ultimately deeply satisfying perspective that will enrich the way we all think about ourselves and how we got to be the way we are.”
—David B. Goldstein, Professor of Molecular Genetics, Duke University
“Gibson has captured the delicate balance between the excitement of the genomic revolution and the frustration that so much is yet to be learned about the genomics of disease. This book is an ideal guide through the complexities of recent environmental change and how this non-genetic process has interacted with human genomic variation to produce today’s landscape of important chronic diseases.”
—Marc Feldman, Professor of Biology, Stanford University
“Gibson deftly synthesizes the new science linking genome variation and human health, debunking entrenched views about the causes and evolution of disease and arguing convincingly for a more comprehensive view. An important book and a great read.”
—David P. Mindell, Dean of Science, California Academy of Sciences
“Geneticist Gibson is a natural teacher. He brings a welcome balance to his descriptions of the roles of genes, the environment, and chance in the major human diseases.”
—Bruce Weir, Chair and Professor of Biostatistics, University of Washington