Gene Machine

From Nobel Prize winner Venki Ramakrishnan‘Beyond superb’ Bill Bryson‘A wonderful book’ Ian McEwanEveryone knows about DNA, the essence of our being, the molecule where our genes reside. But DNA by itself is useless without a machine to decode the genetic information it contains. The ribosome is that machine. Venki Ramakrishnan tells the story of the race to uncover its enormously complex structure, a fundamental breakthrough that resolves an ancient mystery of life itself.

'Invitingly witty', ‘A must-read for anyone interested in a glimpse of the messy business – rivalries, failed experiments, the frustration of mistakes – of how science happens.’, ‘If someone had told me that one of the most witty and enthralling books I’d read this year would be on the quest to understand ribosomes, I believe I would have laughed in his face, but I would have been quite wrong. Gene Machine is beyond superb.’, ‘An engaging and witty memoir…that highlights how science actually works… This profoundly human story is written with honesty and humility… Anyone who is captivated by an absorbing story well told will find much to appreciate in this fascinating book.’, ‘This is not an objective history of the field, but a highly personal account. As such, anyone who wants to know how modern science really works should read it. It’s all here: the ambition, jealousy and factionalism — as well as the heroic late nights, crippling anxiety and disastrous mistakes — that underlie the apparently serene and objective surface represented by the published record.’

Venki Ramakrishnan is a structural biologist who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structure and function of the ribosome. He was knighted in 2012 and elected president of the Royal Society in 2015. He works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.