A History of Genomics across Species, Communities and Projects

This open-access book provides a comprehensive overview of the history of genomics across three species and four decades, from the 1980s to the recent past. It expands the historiographical lens of genomics from large-scale projects to other forms of organization and highlights the importance of practices such as genome mapping, sequence assembly, and annotation. It also explores the use of genomic tools by biochemists, cell biologists, and medical and agriculturally-oriented geneticists and uncovers often forgotten actors such as the European Commission. The book provides new insights on genomics, its expansion, and its developments in the twenty-first century.

Format: Hardback
Length: 380 pages
Publication date: 01 April 2023
Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG

This open-access book provides a comprehensive overview of the history of genomics across three different species and four decades, from the 1980s to the recent past. It takes an inclusive approach to capture not only the international initiatives to map and sequence the genomes of various organisms, but also the work of smaller-scale institutions engaged in the mapping and sequencing of yeast, human, and pig DNA. In doing so, the authors expand the historiographical lens of genomics from a focus on large-scale projects to other forms of organization. They show how practices such as genome mapping, sequence assembly, and annotation are as essential as DNA sequencing in the history of genomics, and argue that existing depictions of genomics are too closely associated with the Human Genome Project.

Exploring the use of genomic tools by biochemists, cell biologists, and medical and agriculturally-oriented geneticists, this book portrays the history of genomics as inseparably intertwined with the day-to-day practices and objectives of these communities. The authors also uncover often forgotten actors such as the European Commission, a crucial funder and forger of collaborative networks undertaking genomic projects. In examining historical trajectories across species, communities, and projects, the book provides new insights on genomics, its dramatic expansion during the late twentieth-century, and its developments in the twenty-first century. Offering the first extensive critical examination of the nature and historicity of reference genomes, this book demonstrates how their affordances and limitations are shaped by the involvement or absence of particular communities in their production.

Weight: 642g
Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783031061295
Edition number: 1st ed. 2023