The long view--meticulous, informed, speculative--on what the genome revolution means. The cryptic title refers to the Delphic poser about whether a boat whose rotted planks have all been replaced is still the same boat: the answer is yes, because the quality of being a boat lies in the relationship of the planks. So it is with life, Danchin argues, which lies not in the DNA or the proteins they encode or the parts of the cell that translate the message; life is the relationships of the parts...A rich Gallic feast of ideas to stimulate and savor, while agreeing with the author that "there is still a great deal that is obscure in our understanding of life."
   --Kirkus Reviews

Danchin...reveals that scientific genome sequencing is only a first step in identifying the myriad genes that make up our 23 pairs of chromosomes. The author draws upon many different fields, from biology and genetics to information theory and literary studies, in his rich and multifaceted discussion of what scientists mean when they talk about a "genome"...The book is fairly technical but well written...[and] aided by Quayle's masterful translation.
   --Publishers Weekly

Danchin dispels the widespread misconception that scientists have laid hold of the keys to genetic power merely by transcribing the sequence of genes within the genome. His lucid analysis demonstrates that the genetic code functions not with the mechanical predictability of Newtonian physics but rather with the elusive suggestiveness of foreign metaphors...Danchin conducts intelligent amateurs surprisingly far into the central issues. This timely book offers hope that the rhetoric and hype of the antagonists fighting over the genome agenda will not drown out rational dialogue.
   --Bryce Christensen, Booklist

Danchin provides an authoritative and impressively multidisciplinary treatment of many aspects of genomics, and his provocative thinking about the raison d'être captured my interest. I suspect it will do the same for many readers from a large number of scientific disciplines, not only biological ones.
   --Axel Myer, Nature

Each gene is a link in the chain of a procedure that enables the specific traits of organisms to be established. It cannot determine entirely which particular trait has been produced. But it does impose limits on their potential, and the most direct way to understand the ins and outs of these traits is in fact to know the genes involved. This is why genome projects are revolutionary: they give us direct access to the complete genetic programs of the organisms studied. The first stage is to identify the instructions in this program one by one. Later, it will be essential to understand how the instructions are connected when the program runs in a given environment. And above all, it will be crucially important to understand the nature of the geometrical program that is superimposed on the genetic program. This is what makes the machine a Turing machine.
   --

Antoine Danchin is Professor and Head of the Unit of Genetics of Bacterial Genomes at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Director of the HKU–Pasteur Research Center in Hong Kong.